Author , 




Title 



Imprint. 



16 — 47372-2 a^O 



The Question of the Philippines 



an address dlllvlred before the graduate club of 
Lbland Stanford Junior Univershty 

ON 

February 14, 1899 



By DAVID STARR JORDAN 

Presid4Hi of iki Umtrtrstty 



f>ALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA 
PRINTED FOR THE GRADUATE CLUB BY THE OOURTiSY «!• 

JOHN J= VALENTINE, fiSQ. 



The Question of the Philippines 



An Address Delivered Before the Graduate Club of 
Leland Stanford Junior University 

ON 

February 14, 1899 



By DAVID STARR JORDAN 
President of the (Jniversity 



PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA 

1899 

PRINTED FOR THE GRADUATE CLUB BY THE COURTESY OF 

JOHN J. VALENTINE, ESQ. 



^ 



^ 



5;il40 



PRESS OF 

THE HICKS-JUDD COMPANY 

SAN FRANCISCO 






PREFATORY NOTE; 



This address was read before the Graduate 
Club of Leland Stanford Junior University on 
February IJf, 1899. It was afterwards, by 
request, repeated before the Congregation of Tem- 
ple Emanu-El in San Francisco, and before the 
Berkeley Club of Oalcland. It is published for 
the eradicate Club by the courtesy of Mr. 
John J. Valentine. 

DAVID STARR JORDAJ^. 



Pai,o Axto, Caufornia. 
March 15, 1899. 



The Question of the Philippines. 



I wish to maintain a single proposition. We should withdraw 
from the Philippine Islands as soon as in dignity we can. It is bad 
statesmanship to make these alien people our partners; it is a crime 
to make them our slaves. If we hold their lands there is no middle 
course. Only a moral question brings a crisis to man or nation. In 
the presence of a crisis, only righteousness is right and only justice is 
safe. 

I ask you to consider with me three questions of the hour. 
Why do we want the Philippines ? What can we do with them ? 
What will they do to us ? 

These questions demand serious consideration, not one at a time 
but all together. We should know clearly our final intentions as 
a nation, for it is never easy to retrace false steps. We have made too 
many of these already. It is time for us to grow serious. Even the 
most headlong of our people admit that we stand in the presence of a 
real crisis, while, so far as we can see, there is no hand at the helm. 
But the problem is virtually solved when we know what our true 
interests are. Half the energy we have spent in getting into trouble 
will take us honorably out of it. Once convinced that we do not want 
the Philippines it will be easy to abandon them with honor. If we 
are to take them we cannot get at it too soon. The difficulty is that 
we do not yet know what we want, and we are afraid that if we once 
let these people go we shall never catch them again. With our long- 
ings after Imperialism we have not had the nerve to act. 

Let us glance for a moment at the actual condition of affairs. 
By the fortunes of war the capital of the Philippine Islands fell, last 
May, into the hands of our navy. The city of Manila we have held, 
and by dint of bulldog diplomacy our final treaty of peace has 
assigned to us the four hundred or fourteen hundred islands of the 
whole archipelago. To these we have as yet no real title. We can 
get none till the actual owners have been consulted. We have a 
legal title of course, but no moral title and no actual possession. 
We have only purchased Spain's quit claim deed to property 
she could not hold, and which she cannot transfer. For the 
right to finish the conquest of the Philippines and to close out the 

5 



insurrection which has gone on for ahnost a century we have agreed, 
on our part, to pay $20,000,000 in cash, for the people of the Islands 
and the land on which they were born, and which, in their fashion, they 
have cultivated. This is a sum absurdly large, if we consider only 
the use we are likely to make of the region and the probable cost of 
its reconquest and rule. It seems criminally small if we consider the 
possible returns to us or to Spain from peddling out the Islands as 
old junk in the open market, or from leasing them to commercial 
companies competent to exploit them to their utmost. The price is 
high when we remember that the United Slates for a century has felt 
absolutely no need for such property and would not have taken any 
of it, or all of it, or any other like property as a gift. The price is 
high, too, when we observe that the failure of Spain plac«d the Islands 
not in our hands but in the hands of their own people, a third party, 
whose interest we, like Spain, have as yet failed to consider. Emilio 
Aguinaldo, the liberator of the Filipinos, the " Washington of the 
Orient," is the de facto ruler of most of the territory. In our hands 
is the city of Manila, alone, and we cannot extend our power except by 
bribery or by force. We may pervert these fragile patriots as Spain 
claims to have done; or, like Spain, we may redden the swamps of 
Luzon with their rebellious blood. 

"Who are these Americans?" Aguinaldo* is reported to ask, 
"these people who talk so much of freedom and justice and the 
rights of man, who crowd into our Islands and who stand as the 
Spaniards did between us and our liberties ?" 

What right have we indeed ? The right of purchase from 
Spain. We held Spain by the throat and she could not choose but 
sell.f 



* According to Capt. Gadsby, U. S. V. 

t "Ambrose Bierce has given an account of this transaction cast in the 
lines of historical drama, and qnite as true to fact as the best of such records. 
It runs as follows : 

" ' McKinley — Have the goodness, sir, to remove your hand from the Phil- 
ippine Islands. 

" ' Sagasta — But, Senor, you have no right to these Islands, and they are 
worth much money to me. 

" ' McK. — Very well. I mean to give you twenty million dollars for them. 

" * Sag — Twenty million dollars ! God o' my soul 1 And they are 
worth a billion! 

" ' McK. — My friend, it is an axiom of political economy that property is 
worth what it will bring; the Islands will bring you exactly twenty millions. 

" ' Sag — From you? 

" ' McK. — From me. There are no other bidders. 

" ' Sag. — But it is not an open market. If you would stand aside — 

" ' McK. — I am not considering hypothetical cases to-day; we must 



If, at the close of our Revolutionary War, the King of France, 
coming in at the eleventh hour and driving the English from our 
Capital, had bought a quit claim deed to the colonies, proposing to 
retain them in the interest of French commerce, he would have held 
exactly the position in which our administration has placed the 
United States. 

In that case George Washington would have insisted, as Agui- 
naldo has done, that only the people who own it have any sovereignty 
to sell. He would have held his people's land against all comers, 
not the least against his late allies. He might even have led a hope 
as foolish and forlorn as that which inspired the late pitiful attack upon 
our forces at Manila, if, indeed, there was such an attack, for there is 
not the slightest evidence that hostilities were begun by Aguinaldo. 

The blood shed at Manila will rest heavy on those the people 
hold responsible for it. There is not the slightest doubt where this 
responsibility rests. A little courtesy, a little tact, on the part of 
those in power would have spared us from it all. These men have 
not led a fodorn fight against Spain for all these years to be tamely 
snubbed and shoved aside as dogs or rebels at the end. If the Pres- 
ident had assured Aguinaldo that his people would not be absorbed 
against their will, there would have been peace at Manila. If he 
had assured the people of the United States that no vassal lands 
would be annexed against their will, there would be peace at Wash- 
ington. The President has no right to assume in speech or in act that 
the United States proposes to prove false to her own pledges or false 
to her own history. Unlike the fighting editor, he is sworn to uphold 
the Constitution. 

If we may trust the record, Aguinaldo became our ally in good 



look at the situation as it is. The Islands are goino; to bring you twenty million 
dollars; that, therefore, is their value, and that is what I offer you. 

" ' Sag. — Madre de Dies 1 — what logic ! Seiior, you should have the chair 
of Dialectics in our great university of — 

" ' McK. — It is not impossible; our demands are not all submitted. 

" ' Sag — Nor — Pardon me, Seiior — submitted to. 

" 'McK.— I trust in God for that. This war is, on our side, for Liberty, 
Humanity, Progress, Religion — 

'« « Sag.— Porto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. He who is in God's pay 
does not starve. Will your Excellency permit me to indulge in a little logic? 
— not as good as that of your Excellency, but such as we can pick up in illiterate 
Spain. 

" ' McK.— Well. 

" ' Sag. — Either you have a right to the Philippines, or you have not. 
If you have, why do you pay for them ? If you have not, why do you take 
them ? 

And in such fashion the war for humanity comes to a business-like end. 



faith on the belief that we were working with him for the freedom of 
his people. In good faith our consuls made him promises we have 
never repudiated, but which, after six months of silence by the casting 
vote of our Vice-President, we refuse to make good. These promises 
were in line with our pledges to Cuba. The consuls, like Aguinaldo, 
supposed that we meant what we said. When we pledged ourselves 
to give up the prisoners he had taken we acknowledged him as our 
ally; and our threats to arrest him, for holding his prisoners, as 
shown in the published correspondence of General E. S. Otis, brought 
on the present wanton bloodshed. In any case, we should have lost 
nothing through courteous treatment, and our dignity as a nation 
would not have suffered even though a civil hearing had been given 
to his envoy, Agoncillo. It may be that Agoncillo is a coward as our 
funny papers picture him, but that should not make him lonesome in 
Washington. 

We know "nothing of Philippine matters, save through cablegrams 
passed through government censorship, and from the letters and 
speech of men of the army and navy. The letters and cablegrams do 
not always tell the same story. It is certain, however, that General 
Otis has been promoted for gallantry at the slaughter of the fifth of 
February and in the subsequent skirmishes which have left 20,000 
natives homeless. This is right if he acted under orders, for a 
soldier must obey. If he acted on his own motion, he should have 
been cashiered. He should neither have provoked nor permitted a 
conflict if any leniency or diplomacy could have prevented it. Even 
taking the most selfish view possible as to our plans, their success 
must depend on our retention of the respect and good will of the sub- 
ject people. 

If the Filipinos are our subjects, they have the right to be heard 
before condemnation. If they are our allies, they have the right to 
be heard before repudiation. Their rights are older than ours. It 
was their struggle for freedom before most of our people had even 
heard of their existence. We may treat these matters as we will, but, 
in the light of history, we shall appear with the tyrant and the coward, 
and our act be the fit conclusion of the "century of dishonor." 
"The wreck of broken promises," says General Miles, referring to 
our Indian treaties, "is strewn across the United States from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific." We have broken the record now for we 
have expanded it to the Orient. " Why is it," a friend once asked 
General Crooks, "that you have such influence with the Indians? '* 
" Because I always keep my word" was the reply. 

To be sure Aguinaldo may not be much of a Washington, a 
Washington of the hen-roost type, perhaps, as the brigand patriots of 



Spanish colonies have been in the past. As to this we have not 
much right to speak. We have never heard his side of the case, and 
we have listened only to Spanish testimony. It is worthy of note 
that our returned officers from Manila, who are men competent to 
judge, speak of him in terms of the highest respect. His govern- 
ment, which we try to destroy, is the most capable, enlightened, and 
just these Islands have ever known. These germs of civic liberty 
constitute the most precious product of the Philippines. But what- 
ever his character or motives, he has one great advantage which 
Washington possessed — he is in the right. By that fact he is 
changed from an adventurer, a soldier of fortune, into a hero, an 
instrument of destiny. If Aguinaldo betrays his people by selling 
out to us, the heroism of the people remains. When men die for 
independence there is somewhere a hero. Self-sacrifice for an idea 
means some fitness for self-government. 

Whatever we may choose to do Aguinaldo is a factor, and our 
sovereignty over his islands must be gained through peaceful con- 
cession if it is gained at all. We could crush Aguinaldo easily 
enough, but we dare not. " Instans tyrannus! " However feeble he 
may be while we run our fires around " his creep-hole" he has only 
to "clutch at God's skirts," as in Browning's poem, and it is we 
who are afraid. This great, strong, lusty nation is too brave to do 
a cowardly deed. In spite of the orgies of our newspapers, we are 
still bothered by a national conscience. We do not like to fight in 
foreign lands against women with cropped hair defending their own 
homes; against naked savages with bows and arrows, nor in bat- 
tles likened to a Colorado rabbit drive. 

The Filipinos are not rebels against law and order but against 
alien control. As a Republic under our protection or without it, 
they stood apparently ready to give us any guarantee we might ask 
as to order and security. 

We may easily destroy the organized army of the Filipinos, bu^ 
that does not bring peace. In the cliffs and jungles they will defy us 
for a century as they have defied Spain. According to Dewey, the 
Filipinos are "fighters from away back." These four words from 
Dewey mean more than forty would from an ordinary warrior. In 
Sumatra it has cost the Dutch upwards of 300,000 men to subdue 
Acheen, and its Malay chieftains are still defiant. Three hundred 
thousand men, of whom two-thirds rotted in the swamps, never see- 
ing a foe or a battle. We shall abandon the struggle in very shame. 
Four thousand Filipinos fell on the glorious fifth of February. At 
the rate of 4000 a day, as Mr. Reed calculates, the race will last 
seven years. A deficit of $160,000,000 a year will appeal to our 

9 



people, if the glory and the bloodshed do not. I see in the papers 
to-day (March i) that the honorable Secretary has just saved a 
million of dollars, reducing this deficit in corresponding degree. 
This he has taken from the return allowance of those volunteers at 
Manila who will not re-enlist. Such economies touch the hearts of 
the people. The people will not foot the bills. They are ashamed 
of shame, and their eyes once opened they cannot be coaxed nor 
driven. 

Let us consider the first of our propositions. Why do we want 
the Philippines? To this I can give no answer of my own. I can 
see not one valid reason why we should want them, nor any why they 
should want us except as strong and friendly advisers. As vassals of 
the United States they have no future before them; as citizens they 
have no hope. But even if we could by kind paternalism make 
their lives happier or more effective, I am sure that we will not. Our 
philanthropy is less than skin deep. The syndicates waiting to exploit 
the Islands, and incidentally to rob their own stockholders, are not 
interested in the moral uplifting of negroes and dagoes. On the 
other hand I am sure that their possession can in no wise help us, not 
even financially or commercially. 

The movement for colonial extention rests on two things: Per- 
sistent forgetfulness of the principles of democratic government on 
the one hand; hopeless ignorance of the nature of the tropics and 
its people on the other. 

But while I give no reason of my own, I have listened carefully 
to the speech of others, and the voices I have heard are legion. 
Their opinions I shall try in a way to classify, with a word of com- 
ment on each. And, first, I place those which claim some sort of 
moral validity, though I acknowledge no basis for such claim. For 
the only morality a nation can know is justice. To be fair as between 
man and man, to look after mutual interests and to do those neces- 
sary things out of the reach of the individual is the legitimate func- 
tion of a nation. It cannot be generous, because it has no rights of 
its own of which it can make sacrifice. Moral obligations belong to 
its people as individuals. Legal obligations, financial obligations, the 
pledges of treaties, only these can bind nation to nation. A nation 
cannot be virtuous, for that is a matter of individual conduct. It 
must be just. So far as it fails to be this, it is simply corrupt. 

It is said that if we do not annex the Philippines we shall prove 
false to our obligations. Obviously there are two primary pledges 
which must precede all others ; first, the obligation of our whole 
history that we shall never conquer and annex an unwilling people ; 
second, our pledge at the beginning of the war, that the United 

10 



States has no disposition to seize territory or to dictate its govern- 
ment.* 

Several questions arise at once. What are those obligations ? To 
whom are they held? By what responsibility have they been 
incurred ? 

To the first question we may get this answer. We are under 
obligations to see that the Philippines are no longer subject to Spanish 
tyranny and misrule. In the words of General Miles, "Twelve mil- 
lions of people that a year ago were suffering under oppression, 
tyranny, and cruelty are to-day under our protection. It would be the 
crime of the nineteenth century to turn them back again." Very 
well, then, we shall not turn them back, nor could we do it if we 
would. Spain is helpless and harmless. She has ceased to be a 
factor in the world's affairs. What next ? Let us quote further 
from General Miles : " If you cannot give them government in their 
own country, if you cannot establish government for them, you can, at 
least, protect them until such time as they shall be prepared for self- 
government. And if they do not care to come and be part of this 
country you can see to it that they have a liberal and free govern- 
ment such as you enjoy yourselves." 

This is, perhaps, an average statement of our supposed obliga- 
tions. If we had adopted this view we should have had no war at 
Manila and our honor would be untarnished. Some would put it more 
strongly. Our obligations demand that we take the Islands by force, 
lest they fall back into the hands of Spain, or, still worse, lest they 
become victims of the cruel schemes of the German Emperor, ever 
anxious to try his hand on matters of which he knows nothing. For 
the House of Hohenzollern, as well as ourselves, is afflicted with a 
" manifest destiny." 

But this German bugaboo is set up merely as an excuse. No 
nation on earth would dare set the heel of oppression on any land our 
flag has made free. The idea that every little nation must be subject to 
some great one is one of the most contemptible products of military 
commercialism. No nation, little or big, is " derelict" that minds its 
own business, maintains:law and order, and respects the development of 
its own people. If we behave honorably towards the people we have 
freed, we shall set a fashion which the powers will never dare to violate. 



* These were noble words and a noble nation must live up to them: "The 
United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, 
jurisdiction, or control over said Islands, except for the pacification thereof, and 
asserts its determination when that is accomplished to leave the government and con- 
trol of the Island to its people." The plea that they were intended for Cuba only and 
do not pledge us to like action elsewhere is too cowardly to permit of discussion. 

11 



We can be under no obligations under our Constitution and 
theory of government, to do what cannot be done, what will not be 
done, or ought not to be done. 

Still others put the case in this way: " We have destroyed the 
only stable government in the Philippines. It is our duty to establish 
another." But if this is really the case we have done very wrong. 
We were told that the rule of Spain was not stable, that it was not 
just, and that it was far worse than no rule at all. Our sympathies 
were with those who would destroy this government of Spain, and our 
armies went out with our sympathies. Either we were on the wrong 
side in the whole business, or else we should now respect the rights of 
the people we set forth to help. If, by ill chance, we have overturned 
the only stable government, we must help the people to make another. 
"A government of the people, for the people, and by the people," 
would be a good kind to help them to establish; one made in their 
own interest not in ours, even though we think them a sorry sort 
of folk. We shall not talk in the same breath of our duty to human- 
ity and of the demands of American commerce, not even though both 
speeches be canting falsehoods. Asa matter of fact, of all the people 
of the tropics the inhabitants of Luzon have shown most promise of 
fairly wise self-rule. All competent judges speak in the highest terms 
of the Cabinet and Parliament at Malolosand of their wisdom and self- 
restraint. At the same time under whatever rule, these people will 
not cease to be orientals. 

To better define these obligations let us find out to whom they 
were incurred. Nobody in particular lays claim to them. Surely we 
are not bound to Spain, for she feels outraged and humiliated by the 
whole transaction. The Filipinos ask for nothing more of us. Doubt- 
less their rulers would return our twenty millions and give us half a 
dozen coaling stations if that would hasten our departure. It is their 
firm resolve, so their spokesmen in Hong Kong have declared, that 
they will not consent "to be experimented upon by amateur colonial 
administrators." Even our "benevolent assimilation" is intoler- 
able on the terms which we demand. 

It was for freedom, not for law and order, that the Filipinos 
and the Cubans took up arms against Spain. Good order we 
are trying to bring to the Filipinos, but that does not satisfy. 
The grave is quiet but it is not freedom. Perhaps it is wrong for these 
people to care for freedom, but we once set them the example, as we 
have to many poor people, to strive for a liberty they have never yet 
won. 

More likely we owe obligations to the city of Manila. Her busi- 
ness men look with doubt on Aguinaldo and his Cabinet, with golden 

12 



bands and whistles and peacock quills to indicate their rank and titles. 
Doubtless they fear the native rabble and the native methods of col- 
lection of customs. But, again, we have as to this only prejudiced 
testimony. According to Lieutenant Calkins, an honored officer in 
Dewey's fleet, the life and property of foreigners has been as safe in 
Malolos as in San Francisco. Moreover, these peddlers from all the 
world have no claims on us. They have long fished in troubled 
waters and they have learned the art. The pound of flesh they have 
exacted from the Filipino in times of peace serves as the insurance 
against all losses in war. It was not to accommodate a few petty 
tradesmen, for the most part Chinese, a few English, and a dozen 
German and Japanese, that we entered into this war. If we owe them 
protection, they owe something to us. The shelter of the American 
flag is the birthright of Americans. Maybe it is to Germany and 
France that we owe obligations. To keep their rulers from falling 
out over the rich spoils of the Philippines, we are under bonds to 
take them all ourselves. But these nations are not in the slightest 
danger of fighting each other or fighting us over the Philippines, The 
Philippines would be as safe as an independent republic, with our 
good will, as they would be in another planet. The huge bloodless 
commercial trusts are afraid of a nation with a conscience. 
Maybe we are under bonds to England alone. Her advice 
is "take it," "take it," and those of her politicians hitherto 
most prone to snub and humiliate us are now most loud in their en- 
couragements. No doubt these clever schemers want to see us 
entangled in the troubles of the Orient. No doubt England is sin- 
cere in thinking that a few years' experience in the hardest of schools 
will teach us something to our advantage as well as to hers. In our 
compactness lies a strength which alarms even England. It means 
our future financial and commercial supremacy. It is England's way 
to play nation against nation so that the strong ones will keep the 
peace, while the weaker ones are helpless in her hands. 

The essential spirit of British diplomacy is to recognize neither 
morality nor justice in relation to an opponent. This has been 
explained and defended by Chamberlain as a matter of course in 
questions of party rivalry or imperial dominion. The only wrong is- 
failure to carry one's point. This feature of British diplomacy has 
been exemplified a hundred times. The career of Cecil Rhodes, the 
struggle with Parnell, the Paris Tribunal of Arbitration in 1893, are 
all cases in point. This gives the clue to British diplomatic success, 
and it explains also the cordial hatred the world over for "Anglo- 
Saxon " methods. From beginning to end of British colonial dealings 
with lower races there has never appeared the word nor the thought 

13 



of justice. Law and trade constitute her sole interest in tropical 
humanity, and law for trade. The thought of human equality, in any 
sense of the term, is foreign to British polity. To emphasize and 
perpetuate inequality lies at the basis of British polity. 

To give up the idea of "equality of all men before the law" 
would be to abandon our sole excuse for being as a nation. We 
would then become a mere geographical expression or police arrange- 
ment, and might logically as well join Canada as a dependency of 
Great Britain. The hope that we may do so is the source of much 
English "good-will." 

If we feel edgewise toward Germany* or if Germany is unfriendly 
toward us, we have England to thank for it. That is her diplomacy. 
She means nothing wrong by it. She is our friend, and in politics no 
water is thicker than her blood. We shall cease twisting the British 
Lion's tail when we have parts equally vulnerable. We shall not 
thwart England when we are dependent upon her good will. But all 
this constitutes no obligation. We did not go into the war on 
England's account, nor must we settle it to suit her. It is our first 
duty to follow our own best interests. 

I yield to no one in admiration for the British people or the British 
character. The best thoughts of the world spring from British brains, 
and British hands have wrought earth's noblest deeds. But British 
inequality is not the source of lofty thought or brave deed. We may 
emulate England in all matters of political administration save the 
very one in which she now urges on us, her cynical advice. It was in 
protest against British inequality that the United Stales became a 
nation. British politics have changed their form, but the basal 
principles remain, and inequality and injustice are no more lovely now 
than in the days of '76. 

A London journal now pictures America as a rosy-cheeked, unso- 
phisticated youth who has left parental boundaries and now •' goes out 
to see the world." We may accept this "lightly proffered laurel," 
but we may note that the youth is gaining this experience under the 
convoy of the toughest old pirate of the whole water front. 

Moreover, England welcomes our intrusion in the Orient because 
she finds in us a necessary ally. We become a partner in her games. 
More than this our new relations must break down our Protective 
Tariff, which is most offensive to her, as, perhaps, it should be to us. 
The possession of Asiatic colonies makes nonsense of our Monroe 



* Doubtless German industrial jealousy is acute and well-grounded and the 
loss of many good soldiers each year by emigration displeases German militarism. 
But these matters have gone on for years and have no relation with the war with 
Spain. 

14 



Doctrine. To realize this fact will teach us needed caution. We 
shall not go at diplomacy in our shirt sleeves any more as though it 
were a game of poker on a Mississippi flat-boat. Besides to follow in 
England's footsteps is the sincerest form of flattery. It gives her 
methods the sanction of our respectability. It takes from the oppo- 
sition party in Parliament one of its strongest weapons. But this, again, 
is no national obligation. If any obligation whatever exists, it is to the 
Filipinos, It is met by insuring their freedom from Spain. For the 
rest, their fate is their own. 

A higher class of English public men advise us to hold the 
Philippines because they do not understand the purpose or basis of 
our government. Our machinery of rule is so constructed that it will 
not work with unwilling people, nor with people lacking in the Saxon 
instinct for co-operation. England has no scruples and no ideals. 
Her only purpose, in the tropics, is to hold to doors open to trade. In 
this business she has the lead and all gains of all trade swell her 
wealth. In her capital is the clearing house of all the world. There 
all prices are fixed and all bills are settled. What is good business 
for her might be impossible for us who are not as a nation in 
business. 

Admitting, however, an obligation to do something to somebody, 
by whom was such obligation incurred ? To whom have we given 
authority to bind us to change the whole current of our history ? Who 
is the mighty agent who brings about such things? The Constitution 
prescribes methods in which our people may incur obligations by 
concurrent action of Congress and the President. Have we empow- 
ered a commodore or even a rear-admiral to change our national 
purposes? Did the victory at Manila bind our people to anything? 
To say that it did is simple nonsense. This was an incident of war, 
not a decision of peace. Did the action of the President in sending 
eighteen thousand soldiers to Manila oblige us to keep them there, 
even if the Constitution of the United States had to be changed to 
give this act justification ? If so, where did the President get his 
authority ? This, too, was an incident of war. Moreover, the 
President is not our ruler but our servant. The people of 
the United States are subject to no obligations save those 
they impose on themselves. Neither the President nor the Cabinet 
have the slightest right to incur national obligations. None have been 
incurred. 

But it may be that efforts have been made to bind the people 
to •' expansion " in advance of their own decision. The vic- 
tory at Manila was so unexpected, so heroic, so decisive, that 
it fired the imagination of our nation. It set the world 

16 



to talking of us, and it inspired our politicians with dreams 
of empire. Such dreams are far from the waking thoughts of 
our people, though while the spell was on us we made some 
movement toward turning them into action. These steps taken 
in folly our nation must retrace. It is not pleasant to go backward. 
For this reason those responsible for our mistakes insist that we are 
sworn to go ahead whatever the consequences. Political futures are 
involved in the success of these schemes. And so every effort has 
been used to rush us forward in the direction of conquest. Our 
volunteer soldiery is held as an army of invasion to rot in the marshes 
when summer comes, as brave men once rotted in Libby and Ander- 
sonville. Each step in the series has been planned so as to make 
the next seem inevitable. To stop to reconsider our steps is made to 
appear as backing down. The American people will not back down 
and on this fact the whole movement depends. This movement was 
not a conspiracy, because every step was proclaimed from the house- 
tops and shouted back from the newspapers and the mobs around the 
railway stations. No wonder the fighting editor claims to dictate our 
national policy. The current of "manifest destiny" is invoked as 
the cover for the movement of Imperialism. At each step, too, the 
powers that be assure us that they are not responsible for the invisible 
forces of Divine Providence have taken matters from their hands. 

In the one breath we are told that it is the will of God that we 
should annex the Philippines and make civilized American Christians 
of their medley population. In another, we must crush out the 
usurper, Aguinaldo, drive his rebel followers to the swamps and fast- 
nesses and build up institutions with the coward remnant that survive. 

All this is in the line of least resistance. Along this line 
Spain ruled and plundered her colonies. In such fashion her colonies 
impoverished and corrupted Spain. Because she had no moral force 
to prevent it, cruelty and corruption became her manifest destiny. It 
will be ours if we follow her methods. Toward such a manifest 
destiny, "the tumult and the shouting" of to-day are hurrying us 
along. The destiny which is manifest is never a noble one. The 
strong currents of history run deep, and the fates never speak through 
the daily newspapers. " Hard are the steps, rough-hewn in flintiest 
rock, States climb to power by." Providence acts only through men 
with strong brain and pure heart. The hand of Providence is never 
at the helm when no hand of man is there. Nations like men must 
learn to say No, when Yes is fatal. To have the courage to stop 
throwing good money after bad is the way nations keep out of bank- 
ruptcy. To back out now, we are told, would expose us to the 
ridicule of all the nations. But to go on will do the same. It is we who 

16 



have made ourselves ridiculous. We have already roused the real 
distress of all genuine friends in Europe, because we have given the 
lie to our own history and to our own professions. That a wise, 
strong, peaceful nation should rise and fight for the freedom of the 
oppressed, rescuing them with one strong blow, touches the imagina- 
tion of the world. The admiration fades into disgust in view of the 
vulgar scramble for territory and commercial advantage, and the 
inability of those responsible to guide the course of events in any 
safe direction. 

I know that words of this sort are not welcome. The funny 
papers have their jokes about Senator Hoar and Cassandra, a person 
who once took a dark view of things in very gloomy times. But 
there are occasions when optimism is treason. Only an accomplice is 
cheerful in presence of a crime. The crisis once past we may rejoice 
in the future of democracy. It is a hopeful sign to-day that the peo- 
ple have never consented, nor have those directing affairs dared trust 
the plain issue of annexation either to the people or to Congress. 
Their schemes must pass through indirection, or not at all. 

We need a cheerful and successful brigand like Cecil Rhodes to pat 
us on the back and stiffen our failing nerves. He is not afraid. 
Why should we flinch from the little misdeeds we have in contem- 
plation ? 

Alfred Russell Wallace, in the London Chronicle^ expresses the 
" disappointment and sorrow which I feel in common, I am sure, with 
a large body of English and Americans, at the course now being 
pursued by the government of the United States toward the people of 
Cuba and the Philippine Islands. 

" The Americans claim the right of sovereignty obtained by the 
treaty and have apparently determined to occupy and administer the 
whole group of Islands against the will and consent of the people. 
They claim all the revenues of the country and all the public means 
of transport, and they have decided to take all this by military force 
if the natives do not at once submit. Yet they say that they come 
' not as invaders and conquerors, but as friends, to protect the 
natives in their homes, their employments and their personal and 
civil rights,' and for the purpose of giving them 'a liberal form of 
government through representatives of their own race.' But these 
people who have been justly struggling for freedom are still spoken of 
as 'insurgents' or 'rebels, ' and they are expected to submit quietly to 
an altogether new and unknown foreign rule which, whatever may be 
the benevolent intentions of the President, can hardly fail to be a more 
or less oppressive despotism. 

17 



" It may be asked what can the Americans do? They cannot 
allow Spain to come back again, and .... they are responsible 
for the future of the inhabitants. But surely it is possible to revert 
to their first expressed intention of taking a small island only as a 
naval and coaling station and to declare themselves the protectors of 
the Islands against foreign aggression. 

" Having done this they might invite the civilized portion of the 
natives to form an independent government, offering them advice and 
assistance if they wish for it, but otherwise leaving them completely 
free. If we express our disappointment (as Englishmen) that our 
American kinsfolk are apparently following our example, it is because, 
in the matter of the rights of every people to govern themselves, we 
had looked up to them as about to show us the better way by respect- 
ing the aspirations towards freedom, even of less advanced races, and 
by acting in accordance with their own noble traditions and republi- 
can principles." 

Do we say that these obligations were entailed by chance, and 
that we cannot help ourselves ? I hear many saying, " If only Dewey 
had sailed out of Manila Harbor, all would have been well." This 
seems to me the acme of weakness. Dewey did his duty at Manila; 
he has done his duty ever since. Let us do ours. If his duty makes 
it harder for us, so much the more we must strive. It is pure cowardice 
to throw the responsibility on him. Who are we to " plead the baby 
act?" If Dewey captured land we do not want to hold, then let 
CTo of it. It is for us to say, not for him. It is foolish to say that 
our victory last May settled once for all our future as a world 
power. It is not thus that I read our history. Chance decides 
nothing. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, 
the Emancipation of the Slaves, were not matters of chance. 
They belong to the category of statesmanship. A statesman knows 
no chance. It is his business to foresee it and to control it. 
Chance is the terror of debpotism. A chance shot along the frontier 
of Alsace, a chance brawl in Hungary, a chance word in Poland, a . 
chance imbecile in the seat of power, may throw all Europe into war. 
In a general war the nations of Europe, their dynasties, and their 
thrones, will burn like stubble in a prairie fire. Our foundation is 
less combustible. Our Constitution is something more than a New 
Year's resolution to be broken at the first chance temptation. The 
Republic is, indeed, in the gravest peril if chance and passion are to be 
factors in her destiny. 

One of the ablest of British public men, one known to all of us 
as a staunch friend of the United States through the Civil War when 

18 



our allies in the present British Ministry could not conceal their hatred 
and contempt, writes in a private letter these words to me: 

" I could not say this in my public writings," he says, and so I 
do not give his name, " but it seems to me that expansionism has in 
it a large element of sheer vulgarity, in the shape of a parvenu desire 
for admission into the imperialist and military camp of the old 
world." 

This is the whole story. Our quasi-alliance with Aguinaldo 
obliges us to see that he and his followers do not rot in Spanish pris- 
ons. Here or about here our obligation ends, though our interest in 
freedom might go further, " Sheer vulgarity " does the rest. The 
desire to hold a new toy, to enjoy a new renown, to feel a new exper- 
ience, or the baser desire to gain money by it, is at the bottom of our 
talk about the new destiny of the American republic and the new 
obligations which this destiny entails. 

We have set our national heart on the acquisition of the Philip- 
pines to give Old Glory a chance in a distant sea, to do something 
unheard of in our past history. We look on every side for justifica- 
tion of this act and the varied excuses we can invent we call our 
obligations. We have saved Manila from being looted by the bar- 
barians. This may be true, though we have not the slightest evidence 
that it was ever in such danger. But we have made it a veritable 
hell on earth. Its saloons, gaming halls and dives of vice have 
to-day few parallels in all the iniquitous world. 

But we have incurred, some say, the obligation to civilize and 
christianize the Filipinos, and to do this we must annex them, that 
our missionaries may be safe in their work. " The free can conquer 
but to save." This is the new maxim for the ensign of the Republic, 
replacing the "consent of the governed," and " government by the 
people," and the worn out phrases of our periwigged fathers. 

But to christianize our neighbors is no part of the business of our 
government. It is said by Dr. Worcester, our best authority on the 
Filipinos, that " as a rule the grade of their morality rises with the 
square of the distance from churches and other civilizing influ- 
ences." This means that the churches are not keeping up with our 
saloons and gaming houses. If they are not we cannot help them. 
Missionary work of Americans as against Mohammedanism, Catholi- 
cism, or even heathenism our government cannot aid. It is our boast, 
and a righteous one, that all religion is equally respected by our 
State. It has been the strength of our foreign missionaries that they 
never asked the support of armies. "The force of arms," said 
Martin Luther, "must be kept far from matters of the Gospel." The 
courage of devoted men and women and the power of the Word, such 

19 



is the only force they demand. When the flag and the police are sent 
in advance of the Bible, missionaries fall to the level of ordinary poli- 
ticians. It is the lesson of all history that the religious forms of as- 
pirations of any people should be respected by its government. From 
Java, the most prosperous of Oriental vassal nations, all missionaries 
are rigidly excluded. They are disturbers of industry. 

It is the lesson of England's experience that all forms of govern- 
ment should be equally respected. In no case has she changed the 
form however much she may have altered the administration. Suc- 
cess in the control of the tropical races no nation has yet achieved, 
for no one has yet solved the problem of securing industry without 
force, of making money without some form of slavery. But those 
nations which have come nearest solution have most respected the 
religions and prejudices and governmental forms of the native people. 
Individual men may struggle as they will against heathenism. A 
government must recognize religions as they are. 

It is said again that the whole matter does not deserve half the 
words given it. We destroyed the government, such as it was, in 
Cuba and Manila ; we must stay until we have repaired the mischief. 
When we have set things going again it will be time to decide what to 
do. The answer to this is that it is not true. We are not repairing 
the damages anywhere, but are laying our plans for permanent military 
occupation, which is Imperialism. Those responsible for these affairs 
have kept annexation steadily in view. It is safe to say that there is 
no intention to withdraw even from Cuba, or to permit any form of 
self-government there, until American influences shall dominate. 

It is not because the governed have some intangible right to consent 
that we object to this, but because the machinery of democracy, which 
is acquiesence in action, will not work without their co-operation. 

But we must take the Philippines, some say, because no other 
honorable course lies before us. Some civilized nation must own 
them ; Spain is out of the question ; so are the other nations of 
Europe, while Aguinaldo and the Filipinos themselves, " big children 
that must be treated like little ones," are unworthy of trust and 
incapable of good government. 

But, again, what guarantee is there that we shall give good govern- 
ment ? When did it become our duty to see that anarchy and cor- 
ruption are expelled from semi-barbarous regions? When did we 
learn how to do it ? We have had six months in which to think 
about it. Who has ever suggested a plan ? For thirty years we have 
misgoverned Alaska* with open eyes and even now scarcely a visible 

* Last week, according to the Springfield Republican, Senator Carter asked 
unanimous consent for the consideration of a code of laws for Alaska. "Various 

20 



sign of repentance. We are not sworn to good government even in our 
own cities. We give them self-government and that is all. The people 
everywhere make their own standards. The standard of Arizona is 
different from that of Massachusetts, and South Carolina has another 
still. There is no good government in America except as the people 
demand it. We want good government on no other terms. 

China, Corea, Siam, Turkey, Tartary, Arabia and the peoples of 
Asia generally, " half devil and half child," are none of them under 
good government. The rulers of Central America, of Venezuela, 
Bolivia, and, worst of all, the unspeakable Hayti are no more efficient 
or more virtuous than the Filipinos. As men we may care for these 
things and work for their improvement. As a nation they are none of 
our business so long as their badness of government does not harm 
our national interests. We have no nearer concern in the govern- 
ment of the Philippines, nor can we give their people a government 
any better than they know how to demand. We might do so 
possibly, but we shall not. We are not in "knight-errantry for our 
health," and we are in no mood for trying fancy experiments. 
Those among us who might lead child races to higher civilization are 
not likely to be called on for advice. 

Others say with swelling breasts that the finger of Providence 
points the way for us, and we cannot choose but obey. The God of 
battles has punished Spain for her centuries of cruelty, corruption, 
and neglect, and we are but as the instrument in His hand. 

There is a story of a man and his boys who got their breakfast at 
a tavern where food was scarce and bills were high. As they left the 
place they complained loudly of the bad treatment they had received. 
At last one of the boys spoke up : " The Lord has punished that man. 
I have my pocket full of his spoons." 



senators objected. Gallinger and Bate thought a night session for such a purpose 
a very bad precedent. Mr. Tillman thought the time should be devoted to the 
anti-scalping bill and Mr. Chandler was anxious to discuss a ticket brokerage bill." 
There being no senator from Alaska to enter into trade or combination there is no 
hope for legislation to bring order into the territory. 

In a recent address Governor Roosevelt is reported as saying: 

" Have you read in the papers that an Alaskan town Wrangel) wants to be 
transferred to Canada? It wants to get out from under our flag merely because no 
one has thought it worth while to give Alaska good government. If we govern the 
Philippines, Cuba, Porto Rico and Hawaii as we have governed Ahska, we shall 
have the same results." 

Mr. Brady, the excellent Governor of Alaska, says: 

"There are sixty men in charge of the government of the territory. They 
have no interests in Alaska except to grab what they can and get away. They are 
like a lot of hungry codfish. Seven of these officials, eleven per cent of the entire 
government, are now under indictment for malfeasance in office." 

21 



"The terrible prophecy of LasCasas," says an eloquent orator, 
" has come true for Spain. The countless treasures of gold from her 
American bondsmen have been sunk forever, her empire richer than 
Rome's has been inherited by freemen, her proud armada has been 
scattered, her arms have been overwhelmed, her glory has departed. 
If ever retributive justice overtook an evil-doer it has overtaken and 
crushed this arrogant power. An army of the dead, larger by far than 
the whole Spanish nation, stormed the judgment seat of God demand- 
ing justice — stern, retributive justice. God heard and answered. This 
republic is now striking the last blow for liberty in America, an 
instrumep^t of justice in the hands of an omnipotent power. In 
the interest of civilization, of imperative humanity, we now go forth 
to the rescue of the last victim, strong in the consciousness of the 
purity of our purpose, and the justice of our cause." 

Again let us say, " The Lord has punished this nation. We have 
our pockets full of her spoons." 

Doubtless Spain was very corrupt and very weak and very wicked, 
but that is not for us to judge while we have our pockets full of her 
spoons. 

The plain fact is this: the guiding hand of Providence, in such con- 
nection as this, is mere figure of speech, intended for our own justifi- 
cation. Doubtless Providence plays its part in the affairs of men, 
but not in such fashion as this. Providence is our expression for 
the ultimate inevitable righteousness which rules in human history. 
It "hath put down the mighty from their seats and hath exalted them 
of low degree ; " but its voice is not the " sound of popular clamor." 
" Fame's trumpet " does not set forth its decrees and it is not inter- 
ested in increasing volume of trade. 

The war with Spain was in no sense holy, unless we make it so 
through its results. Our victories indicate no accession of divine 
favor. We succeeded because we were bigger, richer, and far more 
capable than our enemy. Our navy was manned with trained engi- 
neers, while that of Spain was not. Our gross wealth made sure the 
final success of our army in spite of incompetence and favoritism 
which has risen to the proportions of a national shame. When we 
have cast aside all hopes of booty we shall be fit to sit in judgment 
on the sins of Spain. Till then, to say that we alone are led by Di- 
vine Providence is wanton blasphemy. Four very different impulses 
carried us into the war; the feeling of humanity, the love of adventure, 
the desire for revenge, and the hope of political capital. Strength and 
wealth and our prestige led us to success. The decision of history to 
the righteousness of the war will be determined by the motive that 
finally triumphs. 

22 



Again, some say we went to war in the interests of humanity, civili- 
zation, and righteousness. In this end we have poured out blood and 
treasure. It is only fair that we should be paid for our losses. Let us 
fill our pockets with the spoons. It ceases to be a war for humanity 
when we have forced a humbled enemy, condemned without a hearing, 
to foot all the bills. 

But we would plant the institutions of freedom in the midst of the 
Orient. Freedom cannot be confined. Expansion is her manifest des- 
tiny. "We are like the younger sons of England who, finding their own 
country inadequate, have gone forth to fill the unoccupied places of the 
East, and now the time comes when our children are beginning to face 
the conditions that hedged around our fathers and made us turn our 
faces towards the West. The United States on this continent have 
been pretty well surveyed, explored, conquered, and policed. Shall 
we not see to it that our children shall have as good a forward out- 
look as we have.? We have proved our capacity to expand. We have 
proved our capacity to compete with any man. It were worse than 
folly, yea, criminal, to attempt to set back the onward march of mani- 
fest destiny." 

So runs the current of yellow patriotism. But if the Anglo-Saxon 
has a destiny incompatible with morality and which cannot be carried 
out in peace, if it is bound by no pledges and must ride roughshod over 
the rights and wills of weaker people the sooner he is exterminated the 
better for the world. In like strain we are reminded that the arguments 
against expansion to-day were used to oppose the Louisiana purchase in 
Jefferson's time and the less glorious acquisition of the provinces of 
conquered Mexico. If expansion to Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, 
Oregon, Colorado, Dakota, and California was good national policy, 
why not still further to the Philippines? But, the difference between 
the one case and the others are many and self-evident. The Louisiana 
territory and the territory of California were adjacent to our States. 
They were in the temperate zone with climate in every way favorable 
to the Anglo-Saxon race and to the personal activity on which free 
institutions depend, T+»ey were virtually uninhabited districts, being 
peopled chiefTyHjy nomad barbarians who made no use of the land, 
and whose rights the Anglo-Saxon has never cared to consider. The 
first governments were established by the free men who entered 
them. Finally the growth of railroads and the telegraph brought 
this vast region almost from the first into the closest touch with the 
East and with the rest of the world. If it were not for the develop- 
ment of transportation', unforeseen by the fathers, the arguments they 
used against expansionism would have remained valid even as against 
the Louisiana purchase. 

23 



It is said that "J^ff^^'^on was a rank expansionist." But there is 
no record that he favored expansion for bigness' sake, the seizure or 
purchase of all sorts of land and all sorts of inhabitants regardless 
of conditions, regardless of rights, and regardless of the interests of 
our own people. 

The Philippines are not contiguous to any land of freedom. 
They lie in the heart of that region which Ambrose Bierce calls 
"the horrid zone; Nature's asylum for degenerates." They are 
already densely populated — more densely than even the oldest of the 
United States. Their population cannot be exterminated on the one 
hand, nor made economically potent on the other, except through 
slavery. Finally the conditions of life are such as to forbid Anglo- 
Saxon colonization. Among hundreds of colonial experiments in 
Brazil, in India, in Africa, in China, there is not to-day such a thing 
as a self-supporting European colony in the tropics. White men live 
through officialism alone. There are military posts, so placed as to 
appropriate the land and enslave the people, but there is not one 
self-dependent, self-respecting European or American settlement. 

Individual exceptions and special cases to the contrary, the 
Anglo-Saxon or any other civilized race degenerates in the tropics 
mentally, morally, physically. This statement has been lately denied 
in some quarters. As opposed to it has been urged the fact that 
Thackeray and Kipling, the most virile of British men of letters, were 
born in India, and many other distinguished men have first seen the 
light in tropical Africa or Polynesia. Several Stanford athletes are 
natives of Hawaii, and Cuba has furnished her full share of the men 
of science of the blood of Spain. But this argument indicates a 
confusion of ideas. Degeneration may be any one of three different 
kinds; race decline, personal degeneration, and social decay. 

The essential of race degeneration is the continuous lowering of 
the mental or physical powers of each successive generation. Such a 
process is very slow, requiring centuries before it shows itself. It 
finds its cause in unwholesome conditions which destroy first the 
bravest, strongest, and most active, leaving the feeble, indolent, and 
cowardly to perpetuate the species. Military selection, or the seizure 
of the strong to replenish the armies, has produced race degeneration 
in many parts of Europe. Such degeneration has been the curse of 
Italy and parts of France and Switzerland and doubtless of Spain 
and Germany also. The dull sodden malarial heat of the tropics 
spares the indolent longest. In the Song of the Plague, written by 
some unknown British soldier, we find these words as to India: 



" Cut off from the land that bore us 
Fetrayed by the lard we find 
When the brightest are gone before us 
And the dullest are left behind." 

This is the beginning of race degeneration. The Anglo-Saxon 
in the tropics deteriorates through the survival of the indolent and 
the loss of fecundity ; but this is met or concealed by a number of 
other tendencies and is not soon apparent. The birth of a Kipling, 
a Thackeray, or a Dole could not in any way affect the argument. 
The British child born in India to-day must be reared in England; 
and it is to be remembered that not all the regions south of the 
Tropic of Cancer are to be classed as tropical ; most of Mexico, 
much of India, and the whole Andean region belong to the temperate 
zone. The equable climate of the Hawaiian Islands is not in any 
proper sense torrid. 

In the tropics the tendency to personal decay is more directly 
evident. The swarm of malarial organisms, the loss of social restric- 
tions, the reduced value of life, the lack of moral standards, all tend to 
promote individual laxity and recklessness. ' ' Where there are no Ten 
Commandments," and " the best is as the worst," there, life is held 
cheap and men grow careless. Kipling's fable of " Duncan Parenness" 
tells the story of personal degeneration, and this case is typical of thou- 
sands and thousands. Vice and dissipation are confined to no zone, 
but in the tropics few men of northern blood can escape them. 

With individual deterioration goes social decay. Man becomes 
less careful of his dress, his social observances, his duties to others. 
Woman loses her regard for conventionalities, for her reputation, and 
for her character. The little efforts that hold society together are 
abandoned one by one. The spread of the "Mother Hubbard," 
crowding out more elaborate forms of dress, indicates a general 
failure of social conventionalities. The decay of society reacts on 
the individual. Where it is too warm or too malarial to be conven- 
tional, it is too much trouble to be decent. Without going into causes, 
it is sufficient to say that Anglo-Saxon colonies of self-respecting, 
self-governing men and women are practically confined to the 
temperate regions. 

The annexation of the Philippines is, therefore, not a movement 
of expansion. We cannot expand into space already full. Our 
nation cannot expand where freedom cannot go. Neither the people 
nor the institutions of the United States can ever occupy the Philip- 
pines. The American home cannot endure there, the town-meeting 
cannot exist. There is no room for free laborers, no welcome for them, 
and no pay. The sole opening for Americans in any event will be as 

25 



corporations or agents of corporations, as Government officials or as 
members of some profession requiring higher than native fitness. 
There is no chance for the American workman, but for sjndi- 
cates it offers great opportunities. Yes, for the syndicates who handle 
politics as an incident in business. But the more syndicates we can 
induce to leave the shelter of our flag, the better for our people. 
Let them take their chances without our help. 

If it were possible to exterminate the Filipinos as we have 
destroyed the Indians, replacing their institutions and their people by 
ours, the political objections to annexation would, in the main, disap- 
pear whatever might be said of the moral ones. 

For our treatment of the Indian, there is, in general, no moral 
justification. There is a good political excuse in this — that we could 
and did use their land in a better way than was possible to them. We 
have no such excuse in Luzon; we cannot use the land except as 
we use the lives of the people. 

We cannot plant free institutions in the Orient because once 
planted they will not grow ; if they grow they will not be free. We 
cannot exterminate these people, and if we did we could not use their 
land for our own people ; we could only fill it with Asiatic colonists, 
Malay, Chinese, or Japanese, more of the same kind, not of our kind. 
" Any attempt to govern the tropical possessions of the United States 
on democratic principles," says Mr. W. Alleyne Ireland, one of our 
wisest authorities, "is doomed to certain failure. It has been already 
shown that without forced labor, or at least some form of indentured 
labor, large industries cannot be developed in tropical colonies." 
Such forced labor can be controlled only by the compulsion of the 
Government as in Java, or by the activity of great corporations as in 
Hawaii and Trmidad. 

" It is thought by many," says Mr. Ireland, "that though it may 
be unadvisable to grant the (tropical) colonies representative govern- 
ment at present, the time will soon come when the people will show 
themselves capable of self-government. Judging from past experience 
there would seem to be little hope that these pleasant anticipations 
will ever be realized. We look in vain for a single instance within 
the tropics of a really well-governed country." 

The notion that in these fertile Islands our surplus working men 
shall find homes is the height of absurdity. Our labor leaders under- 
stand this well enough, and for once they stand together on the side of 
common sense. Scarcely any part of the United States is so crowded 
with people as Luzon or Porto Rico ; in no part is the demand for 
labor less or its rewards so meager. Ten cents a day is not a free 
man's scale of wages ; and no change of government can materially 

2t) 



alter this relation. In the tropics the conditions of subsistence are so 
easy and the incentives to industry so slight that all races exposed to 
relaxing influences become pauperized. It is the free lunch system 
on a boundless scale, the environment of Nature too generous to be 
just, too kind to be exacting. 

For the control of dependent nations and slave races the fair 
sounding name of Imperialism has lately come into use. It has been 
hailed with joy on the one hand for it is associated with armorial 
bearings and more than royal pomp and splendor. It has been made 
a term of reproach on the other, and our newspaper politicians now 
hasten to declare that they favor expansion only when it has no taint of 
Imperialism. But to our British friends nothing could be more 
ridiculous. You must have an iron hand or you get no profits. To 
cast aside Imperialism is to cast away the sole method by which 
tropical colonies have ever been made profitable to commerce or 
tolerable in politics. On the other hand these same people tell us 
that they have not the slightest, thought of making States of Cuba 
or the Philippines, or of admitting the Filipinos to citizenship. But 
if the Filipino is not a citizen of his own land, who is? 

We are advised on good patrician authority that all is well, what- 
ever we do, if we avoid the fatal mistake of admitting the brown 
races to political equality — of letting them govern us. We must rule 
them for their own good — never for our advantage. In other words, 
lead or drive the inferior man along, but never recognize his will, 
his manhood, his equality; never let him count one when he is 
measured against you. 

These maxims should be familiar; they are the philosophy of 
slavery, and they only lack the claim of the right to buy and sell the 
bodies and souls of men. Our purchase of the Filipinos from Spain, 
and our subsequent treatment of the resultant slave insurrection sup- 
plies the missing element. 

One plan or the other we must adopt; either self-rule or 
Imperialism; there is no middle course, and both under present 
conditions are virtually impossible. Let the friends of annexation 
develop some plan of government, any plan whatever, and its folly 
and ineffectiveness will speedily appear. To go ahead without a plan 
means certam disaster, and that very soon; whatever we do or do 
not do, there is no time to lose. 

Conquest of the Orient is not expansion, for there is no room for 
free manhood to grow there. It is useless to disclaim Imperialism 
when we are red-handed in the very act. Annexation without Imperial- 
ism is sheer anarchy. Annexation with Imperialism may be much worse, 
for so far as it goes it means the abandonment of democracy. The Union 

27 



cannot endure •' half slave, half free," half republic, half empire. 
We may make vassal tribes of the Filipinos, but never free States in 
the sense in which the name "State" applies to Maine, Iowa, or 
California. The Philippines can have no part in the Federal Union. 
Their self-government must be of a wholly different kind, the out- 
growth of their own needs and dispositions. What they need is not 
our freedom, but some form of paternal despotism or monarchy of 
their own choosing which shall command their loyalty and yet keep 
them in peace. 

" It is no man's duty to govern any other man." Still less is it 
a nation's duty to govern another nation. All that the weak nations 
ask of the strong is: " Stand out of my sunlight and let me alone." 

We have never adopted the theory that each small nation must 
be tributary to some other, and that each nation of the lazy tropics 
must have slave drivers from Europe to make its people work. 

Imperialism means such a control of tropical lands that they may 
be economically productive or that their doors may be thrown open to 
commerce. It is a definite business, difficult and costly, with few 
rewards and many dangers. It is fairly well understood by some of 
those engaged in it. It has been successfully conducted under cer- 
tain very narrow lines by Great Britain and by Holland, although 
both countries have the record of many failures before they learned 
the art. Germany has tried it for a little while, as have also Japan 
and Belgium, none of these with successful results. Spain is out of 
the business in final bankruptcy and her assets are in our hands for 
final disposition. France has made failures only, and this because 
she has held colonies for her own ends, regardless of their own 
interests. 

" No sooner," says Lionel Decle, " was the island (of Madagas- 
car) in the hands of these (French colonial leaders) than they closed 
it to all foreign prospectors. They imposed prohibitive duties on all 
foreign goods, keeping the country for the French colonists that never 
came, and that never will come." 

Control of the tropics has none of the glories we vulgarly 
associate with imperial sway. Its details are trivial, paltry and 
exasperating in the last degree. The more successful as to money, 
the more offensive to freedom. In some regions, as Guiana, no 
nation has yet accomplished anything either in bringing civiliza- 
tion or in making money, while in Java and Trinidad the results, 
however great, have been financial or commercial only. Every 
dollar made in Java has been blood money, red with the blood 
of Dutch soldiers on the one side and with that of the Malay people 

28 



on the other. In Jamaica, the abolition of slavery marked the end 
of industrial prosperity. 

The voice of common British opinion is that it is our turn to 
take a hand in the control of the tropics. This idea is assumed in 
Kipling's appeal, " Take Up the White Man's Burden," and the real 
force of his verse is a warning that there is no easy way to success. The 
motive is not glory, but the profit to the world. It is our duty, with 
the others, to share the burden of tropical control that we may increase 
the wealth and commerce of the nations. There is some reason in 
this appeal. It is a business we cannot wholly shirk. I maintain, 
however, that so far as we are concerned, this is a matter purely for 
individual enterprise. The American merchant, missionary, and 
miner have taken up the white man's burden cheerfully; the Ameri- 
can Government cannot. ' 

"A certain class of mind," says Mr. Charles T. Lummis, "froths, 
at the bare suggestion that the United States cannot 'do anything 
any other nation can.' Well, it cannot — and remain United States. 
A gentleman has all the organs of a blackguard. But a gentleman 
cannot lie, steal, bully nor ravish. A republic cannot be a despot- 
ism. The Almighty himself cannot make two mountains without a 
valley between them. The one would cease to be a republic; the 
other would cease to be two mountains. It is no more to the reproach 
of the United States that it cannot be a tyrant than to God's shame 
that He cannot be a fool." 

I notice that not one of our tried friends in England, men like 
Bryce, Morley, and Goldwin Smith, who understand our spirit and 
our laws, urge the holding of the Philippines. In England, as in 
America, the call to hold the Philippines is mainly that of the jingo 
and the politician, the reckless and conscienceless elements in the 
public life of each nation joining hands with each other. 

The white man's burden, in the British sense, is to force the 
black man to support himself and the white man, too. This is the 
meaning of "control of the tropics." The black man cannot be 
exterminated at home as the red man can; therefore, let us make him 
carry double. The world needs all that we can get out of him. This 
may be all the better for the black man in need of exercise, but 
it is the old spirit of slavery, and its disguise is the thinnest. 

Our Monroe Doctrine pledges us to a national interest in the 
tropics of the New World. This is because throughout the New 
World American citizens have interests which our flag must protect. 
In matters of legitimate interest no nation has been less isolated than 
America; but our influence goes abroad without our armies. Force 
of brains is greater than force of arms, more worthy and more lasting. 

29 



Of all the recent phases of American expansion the most important 
and most honorable is that which is called the " peaceful conquest of 
Mexico." We hear little of it because it sounds no trumpets and 
vaunts not itself. The present stability of Mexico is largely due to 
American influences. Every year American intelligence and Ameri- 
can capital find better and broader openings there. In time, Mexico 
shall become a republic in fact as well as in name, side by side in 
the friendliest relation with her sister republic of broader civilization. 
It is not necessary that the same flag should float over both. If one 
be red, white, and blue, let the other be green, white, and red — what 
matter? The development of Mexico, the " awakening of a nation," 
is thus a legitimate form of expansion. It is not a widening of 
governmental responsibility, but a widening of American influence and 
an extension of republican ideas. The next century will see Mexico 
an American instead of a Spanish republic, and this without war, 
conquest, or intrigue. 

The purpose of the Monroe Doctrine is not to keep the European 
flag from America. Its function is to prevent the extension here of 
European colonial methods, the domination of weak races by strong, 
of one race for the good of another, of the principle of inequality of 
right which underlies slavery. 

The spread of law and order, respect for manhood, of industrial 
wisdom and commercial integrity, this is the true "white man's 
burden," not the conquest and enslavement of men of other races. 
Expansion is most honorable and worthy if only that which is worthy 
and honorable is allowed to expand. The love of adventure, a 
precious heritage of our race, may find its play under any flag if it 
cannot honorably take our own to shelter it. 

The world of action is just as wide to-day as it ever was, and if 
the red, white, and blue floated over every foot of it, it would be no 
wider. 

If after our conquest of Mexico, while our flag floated over Chapul- 
tepec, we had never hauled it down but had seized the whole land, 
we should have gained nothing for civilization. The splendid natural 
development of the country by which, in Diaz's own words, it has 
become "the germ of a great nation," would have been impossible 
under our forms, as under the imperial forms of Napoleon and Maxi- 
milian. The modern growth of Japan would never have taken 
place had she, like India, been numbered with England's vassals. 
A nation must develop from within by natural processes if it is to 
become great and permanent. 

"The silent, sullen peoples, 'half devil and half child,' " shall 
"weigh us and our God," not by our force of arms nor by our 

30 



accuracy of aim, but by our loyalty to the sense of justice which 
exists even under a dusky skin. 

But some urge that we must hold far-off colonies, the farther the 
better, for the sake of our own greatness. Great Britain is built up 
by her colonies. "What does he know of England, who only England 

knows.?" 

"Just pride is no mean factor in the state, 
The sense of greatness makes a people great." 

The grandeur of Rome lay in her colonies, and in her far and 
wide extension must be the greatness of the United States. 

But the decline of Rome dates from the same far and wide 
extension. Extension for extension's sake is a relic of barbarous times. 
An army in civilization must exist for peace not for war, and it should 
be as small as it can safely be made. A standing army means waste, 
oppression, and moral decay. Carlyle once said something like this, 
"It is not your democracy or any other 'ocracy that keeps your people 
contented. It is the fact that you have very much land and very few 
people." But this is not half the truth. The main reason of our 
prosperity is our freedom from war. Our farmer carries no soldier on 
his back. We fear no foreign invader because we invite none. Were 
the people of the continent of Europe once freed from the cost of 
militarism, their indu-strial progress would be the wonder of the ages. 
As it is they are ground down by worse than medieval taxation. A 
French cartoon represents the farmer of 1780 with a feudal lord on 
his back. The French farmer of 1900 is figured as bearing a soldier, 
then a politician, and on the back of these a money-lender. Without 
these, industr)' would buy prosperity and prosperity contentment; with 
contentment would rise new hope. The hopelessness of militarism 
is the basis of European pessimism ; men see no end to the piling up 
of engines* of death. Were the continent of Europe freed from 
killing taxation, England could no longer hold her primacy in trade. 
War has destroyed the life of her rivals. Could bankrupt Italy dis- 
band her armies and sink her worthless navies the glories of the 
golden age would come again. Could France cease to be militant 
she would no longer be decadent. If politics in the army is fatal to 
military power the army in politics is fatal to the State. No nation 



i 



* " The forces of darkness," says Dr. Edward Alsworth Ross, "are still 
strong and it seems as if the middle ages would swallow up everything won by 
modern struiigles. It is true that many alarms have proved false, but it is the steady 
strain that tells on the mood. It is pathetic to see on the Continent how men fear to 
face the future. No one has the heart to probe the next decade The people throw 
themselves into the pleasure of the moment with the desperation of doomed men who 
hear the ring of the hammer on the scaffold." 

31 



i 



can grow in strength when its bravest and best are each year devoured 
by the arrny. This has gone on in southern Europe for a thousand 
years. It is the chief cause of the decline of the Latin nations. 

There is no doubt that miUtary selection is the most insidious foe 
to race development. The destruction of the brave in the Roman 
wars finally, according to Otto Sech, left the Romans a race of 
" cont^enital cowards." In proportion as a nation succeeds in war, 
it must lose its possibility of future success in war or peace. The 
Greatest loss to America in her Civil War rests in the fact that a 
million of her strongest, bravest, most devoted men have left no 
descendants. Such loss has gone on in Europe since war began. If we 
cannot stop fighting, civilization will have nothing left worth fight- 
ing for. 

The terrible wastes of war are recognized by Great Britain. These 
she has tried to minimize by letting alone everything which does not 
relate to commerce. She has ceased to hope for the impossible and 
has come down to business principles. The British Empire is a huge 
commercial trust. England has no illusions. 'She " neither fears nor 
admires any nation under heaven." She never fights save when she is 
sure to win and to throw the costs on her opponent. She has secured 
all points of real commercial advantage and is making the most of the 
ignorance and folly of those who strive to emulate her. 

Great Britain expands where order and trade extend. Our expan- 
sion demands one thing more, equality of all men before the law. 
All expansion of our boundaries brought about by honorable means 
and carrying equal justice to all men, I, for one, earnestly favor. 
To that limit, and that only, I write myself down as a " rank expan- 
sionist." I see no honor in our seizure of the Philippines, nor 
prospect of justice in our ultimate rule. 

Our British friends speak of the smoothness of their colonial 
methods, especially in the Crown colonies, which Parliament cannot 
touch. Everything runs as though newly oiled and the British public 
hears nothing of it. Exactly so. It is none of the public's business, 
and the less the public has to say the less embarrassment from its igno- 
rant meddling. The Colonial Bureau* belongs to the Crown, not to 
the people. The waste and crime and bloodshed do not rest on their 
heads. But we are not ready for that kind of adjustment. Our Ex- 
ecutive is a creature of the public. We have no governmental affairs 
which are sacred from the eyes or the hand of the people. " Govern- 



* In the journals, to-day, I see a record of a question addressed in Parliament to 
the British Minister of Finance. " This is the question of government with govern- 
ment," said he, in refusing to answer. In other words, imperial affairs in England 
are none of the people's business. If they were, there would be fewer of them. 

32 



ment of the people, for the people, and by the people " implies that the 
people are to be interested in all its details; every one to the least and 
the greatest, even at the risk of destroying its smoothness of opera- 
tion. Hence, colonial rule as undertaken by us must be marred by 
vacillation, ignorance, incompetence, parsimony, and neglect. All 
these defects appear in our foreign relations as well. For the reason 
of the greater intelligence of our people in public affairs, our gov- 
ernment will enter on the control of the tropics with a great handicap. 
The people want to know all about it. The Administration must 
keep open books and justify itself at every step. This will act 
against its highest efficiency. The forms of self-government are 
not adapted to the government of others. The very strength of 
the Republic unfits it for complicated tasks, because its power can be 
brought at once into effect only as the people understand its purposes. 
Popular government and good government are two very different 
things. Often they are for generations not on speaking terms with 
each other. 

The advantages of sound nationality over strong government were 
the subject of the fullest discussion a hundred years ago. The feeble 
rule of democracy is the strongest of all governments when it has the 
force of the popular will behind it; when this fails it is paralyzed 
as all government should be. A monarchy is more effective in foreign 
affairs and calls out better service than democracy. If that were all 
we might revert to monarchy and close the discussion. But that is 
not all, and every move toward centralization costs on the other side. 
The essential fact of monarchy is not the presence of the king, but 
the absence of the people in all large transactions. 

This subject has been ably discussed by Goldwin Smith, who 
calls special attention to our want of governmental apparatus for the 
control of dependencies. That we cannot have such apparatus most 
other British writers have failed to note. Imperialism demands the 
powers of an emperor. " The British Crown, for the government of 
the Indian Empire, has an imperial- service attached to it as a mon- 
archy, and separate from the services which are under the immediate 
control of Parliament. British India, in fact, is an empire by itself; 
governed by a Viceroy who is a delegate of the Crown, exempt as a 
rule from the influence of home politics and reciprocally exercising 
little influence over them. Before the Mutiny, which broke up the 
army of the East India Company, India was still the dominion of 
that Company ; and the transfer of it to the Crown, though inevitable, 
was not unaccompanied by serious misgiving as to the political 
consequences which might follow. Even for the government of other 
dependencies Great Britain has men like the late Lord Elgin, 

33 



detached from home parties and devoted to the Imperial Service. In 
her dependencies Great Britain is, in fact, still a monarchy though 
at home she has become practically a republic. In the case of the 
United States it would seem hardly possible to keep the Imperial 
Service free from political influence, or, reciprocally, to prevent the 
influence of the empire on politics at home. Imperial appointments 
would almost inevitably be treated as diplomatic appointments are 
treated now." 

" In what, after all," continues Goldwin Smith, " does the profit 
or bliss of imperial sway consist? The final blow has just been dealt 
to the miserable and helpless remnant of that empire on which, in 
the day of its grandeur, the sun was said never to set, and to which 
Spanish pride has always desperately clung. It may safely be said 
that not the expulsion of Moriscos or Jews, nor even the despotism 
of the Inquisition, did so much to ruin Spain as the imperial 
ambition which perverted the energies of her people, turning them 
from domestic industry and improvement to rapacious aggrandizement 
abroad. The political and religious tyranny was, in fact, largely the 
consequence of the imperial position of the monarchy, which, by the 
enormous extent of its dominions and its uncontrolled sources of 
revenue, was lifted above the nation." 

In the conduct of the war and the peace negotiations which 
followed it we have examples of the conditions of colonial rule. At 
no step since the beginning has the American people been consulted. 
At no point has consultation been possible. In managing affairs like 
this there can be no divided councils. The responsible head must 
rule, and it matters not a straw what is the wish of the people who 
foot the bills. The only check on the Executive is the certainty that 
the people will have the last word. What you think or I think or 
the people think of the whole business cuts no figure whatever in 
the progress of events, because our opinion can at no time be asked. 
After all, we are not so much worried because we have not asked the 
consent of the people of the Philippines. It is because the American 
people have not been consulted. In a matter most vital to the life of 
the nation they are represented only by the rabble of the streets. 
When their consent should be asked they are told that it is too late to 
say, No! 

But there are many wise economists who would make permanent 
just this condition of affairs. The certainty that success in colonial 
matters would take them absolutely out of the hands of the people is 
their argument for imperial expansion as opposed to democracy. 

Through concentration of power in the Executive we may be 
able to make of Havana and Manila clean and orderly cities. Shall 



we not by similar means sooner or later purify San Francisco and 
New York ? If martial law is good for Luzon or for Santiago, why not 
for Wilmington, or Virden, or even for Boston? 

If military methods will clean up Havana and Santiago, why not use 
them for the slums of all cities ? If it is our " white man's burden " 
to make the black man work in the tropics, why not make white men 
work outside of the tropics ? If we furnish public employment in the 
tropics, forcing the unemployed to accept it, why not do the same 
with the unemployed everywhere ? Why not make slaves of all who 
fail to carry the black man's burden of toil ? 

To be good, it is argued, government must first be strong, and 
the difficulties before us will demand and at last secure the strong 
hand. 

Impressed by the weakness and corruption of popular govern- 
ment these economists wish, at any cost, to limit it. To decide by 
popular vote scientific questions like the basis of coinage, the nature 
of the tariff, the control of corporations, is to dispose of them in the 
most unscientific way possible. The vote of a majority really settles 
nothing, and a decision which the next election may reverse exposes 
us to the waste which vacillation always entails. 

It is said that in the ideal of the fathers our government was not 
a democracy. It was a representative republic, and the system of 
representation was expressly designed to take the settlement of 
specific affairs out of the hands of the people. It was not the part 
of the people to decide public questions, but to send "their wisest 
men to make the public laws." Nowadays this ideal condition has 
been lost. The people no longer think of choosing their wisest men 
for any public purpose. They try to choose those who will do their 
bidding. 

The daily newspaper and the telegraph carry to every man's 
hand something of the happenings of every day the world over. On 
the basis of such partial information every man forms his own opinion 
on every subject. These opinions for the most part are crude, 
prejudiced, and incomplete; but they serve as a basis for public 
action. The common man's horizon is no longer bounded by the 
affairs of the village, to be settled in town-meeting in accordance 
with the expectations of the fathers. He knows something about all the 
affairs of State, and as local affairs receive scant notice in the news- 
papers it is these which he neglects and forgets. The town-meeting 
has decayed through the growth of newspaper information, the intro- 
duction of the voter to broader interests — interests less vital no doubt 
to the average man but more potent to affect his fancy. 



Having opinions of his own, however crude, on all public ques- 
tions, the citizen demands that his representatives should carry out 
these opinions. If he has, or thinks he has, a financial interest in 
any line of policy, he will vote for men whose interests are the same 
as his. In such manner Congress has become not an assembly of 
" the wisest men to make the public laws," but a gathering of attor- 
neys, each pledged to some local or corporate interest, and each doing 
his best, or appearing to do it, to carry out lines of policy dictated by 
others. This condition the fathers could not foresee. The tele- 
graph and the newspaper have brought it about. It has great disad- 
vantages, but it cannot be helped and it is with us to stay. 

Because of this condition economists of a certain type welcome 
all extensions of administrative functions. They would prescribe a 
dose of Imperialism to stiffen the back of our democracy. If we com- 
plicate the duties of government, if we plunge into delicate and 
dangerous foreign relations, our failures and humiliation will increase 
the demand for skill. The business of horse-stealing quickens a 
man's eye and improves his horsemanship. In such fashion the 
business of land-grabbing improves diplomacy. The old idea of 
representation by statesmen unpledged to any line of action will 
arise again. The choice of attorneys will be limited to local 
assemblies, and real leaders of parties will come to the front. 

Such a change England has seen since her aggressive foreign 
policy forced upon her the need of eternal vigilance. Such a 
change makes for better government at the expense of popular 
choice. "This may not be republicanism," says Lummis, speaking 
of the work of Diaz in Mexico, "but it is business." The ruler of 
England is not the people's choice nor the choice of the Queen. He 
is the cleverest mouthpiece of the dominant oligarchy. It is currently 
said that British imperial experiences have caused the purification of 
British politics and the expulsion from them of the spoils system. 
For this statement there is no foundation in fact. It is through the 
growth of individual intelligence in a compact homogeneous nation 
that higher political ideals have arisen. The conquest of tropical 
races has accompanied this, but has been in no degree its cause. 

In the British system, the Parliament of the people is behind the 
premier, who can act as freely, as boldly and as quickly as he dare. 
In the Federal system, the Congress of the people stands first and 
the President acts behind them and by their permission. Only in 
time of war are these conditions reversed and then only partially. For 
this reason the severe blame visited on the President for failure to 
declare any tangible policy in regard to the Philippines is only par- 
tially deserved. 

36 



A movement toward the British system would require changes 
in the Constitution, a movement toward further centralization and 
toward greater party responsibility. This its advocates usually 
recognize, " It may not be republicanism, but it is business." Such 
a change, it is maintained, would soon do away with our poisonous and 
shameful spoils system. It would insure strong, sound, and dignified 
party administration, because anything short of this would ruin party or 
country. Under such conditions no paltry place-hunter could hold a 
seat in our Cabinets, no weakling could thrust himself forward in 
ou'r Civil Service, and our Presidents would be men who would 
make public opinion, never supinely wait for it, still less accept its 
vulgar counterfeit of mob opinion. 

With such conditions in the Executive, and an automatic, per- 
sistent, competent colonial service, with army and navy to match, 
we could dictate to the whole earth. We could have our hand in 
the affairs of all nations, and the diplomacy of all the world would 
tremble at our frown. 

All this in its essence, it is claimed, is to return to the ideals of 
the fathers before Jackson's vulgarity corrupted our Civil Service, 
and before Lincoln's "bath of the people" led the common man to 
regard himself as the main factor in our government. "Of the 
people, by the people," were Lincoln's additions. The right word 
is " Government /(?r the people," and by those who know better 
than the people how the people should be governed. 

In this vein we are told that the people have been " debauched 
by freedom." They have come to fear the bugaboo of too much 
government, too much army. Because we are " debauched by 
freedom " we have lost our respect for authority, our respect for law. 

Some of our historians now assure us that government by the 
consent of the governed was only a catch-phrase. We never meant 
what we said when we took these glittering generalities from the 
philosophers of France. We governed our Louisiana territory just as 
we pleased with these phrases in our mouths, asking no advice of the 
French Creoles. We never sought consent of the Indian. We 
override the will of the negro even yet. His vote is only a farce. We 
have never even asked our women, half our whole number, whether 
they consent to our government or not. All of this is petty 
quibbling. These exceptions only prove the rule. The principle 
holds in spite of temporary failures justified by local conditions or 
not justified at all. So far as women are concerned it is still, right or 
wrong, the theory of most civilized governments, ours with the rest, 
that women have no governmental interests at variance with those of 
men. They consent tacitly but constantly to be represented by 

37 



their fathers, brothers, or husbands. Doubtless this condition is not 
eternal, but it exists at present, and no one can claim that " consent 
of the governed " is reached only by a formal vote. 

As to this Lincoln once said: — "the framers of the Declaration 
of Independence meant to set up a standard maxim for free society 
which should be familiar to all, and revered by all, constantly looked 
to, constantly labored for, and even, though never perfectly attained, 
constantly approximated, and thereby constantly deepening its influ- 
ence, and augmenting the happiness, and value of life to all peoples 
of all colors everywhere. " One year later, speaking at Philadelphia, 
he said that he would " rather be assassinated on the spot than to act 
in the view, that the country could be saved by giving up the princi- 
ples of the Declaration of Independence." 

"Our own country," says Hosea Wilbur, " is bounded on the 
north and the south, on the east and the west by justice, and where 
she oversteps these invisible bounds, even so much as by a hair's 
breadth, she ceases to be our mother." Inside these boundaries our 
flag is the banner of freedom; outside it is the standard of the pirate. 
Whether on a stolen guano Mexican island or on a sugar plantation 
wrenched or bought from Spain, its truest friends shall be the first 
to haul it down. 

Doubtless these imperialists are partly in the right. It is certain 
that the formation of a colonial bureau and a foreign bureau wholly out- 
side of popular control would make, for the time at least, for better 
(government and stronger administration. Doubtless needs like 
those of England w-ill hasten British methods of meeting them. But 
government for the people and not of them has its weakness as well 
as its strength. The strength of democracy lies not in its apparent 
force. It lies latent, to be drawn on in times of real need. 

Because of its latent power our great blundering democracy, 
slow in war and simple or clumsy in diplomacy, is strong above all 
other nations. It can safely try civic experiments the very thought 
of which, if taken seriously, would throw all Europe into convulsions. 
The imperial government is a swift express train which will run with 
crreat speed on a proper track, but which is involved in utter ruin by 
a moment's slip of mismanagement. The Republic is an array of 
lumbering farm wagons, not so swift nor so strong, but infinitely more 
adaptable, the only thing you can use on a farm. 

The beauty of democratic institutions is that without the 
intelligent consent of those affected by them they will not work at 
all. All permanent government rests on acquiescence of the pe©ple, 
but democracy demands more. It insists on their positive action. 

38 



The strength of empire, however disguised, lies in brute force 
and that alone. That of democracy lies in the self-control and the 
self-respect of its individual citizens. The work of Great Britain 
through the centuries has been to teach its people and its vassals the 
lesson of respect of law. It has been the mission of the United 
States to teach respect for manhood, a matter vastly more difficult 
as well as more important. 

A nation self-governed is the most powerful of all nations, 
because she is at peace within herself, and being sound at heart she 
has taken the first step toward good government, a step by which the 
best government possible to men must be reached in time. Even the 
blunders and corruptions of democracy make for good government 
at last. When the people find out what hurts them, that particular 
wrong must cease. Even the spoils system with all its waste and 
shame has its educative value, and tremendous will be the educative 
value of the process by which it is at last thrown off. The reaction 
from the conquest of Luzon will save us from Imperialism for the 
next fifty years. 

Democracy is always wiser than it seems. The common poli- 
tician knows the weaknesses of the people and tries to profit by them. 
The true statesman knows the strength of the people and tries to 
lead it, and the results he attains are the marvel of the world. Such 
a leader of the people was Lincoln, He could touch the noblest 
springs in our national character. Such leaders will rise when occa- 
sion shall demand them. Meanwhile, the men are not wanting. 
Sound common sense and devoted patriotism are needed in all walks 
in life and are found there. The froth on the waves may fill our 
public offices, but the great deep is below them. 

" Are all the common ones so grand, 
And all the titled ones so mean ?" 

was asked in 1863 of the Army of the Potomac. "The common 
men so grand" though all the titled ones be mean is the experience 
of all democracy. It is far better and far safer than the reverse con- 
dition when only titled men are great and all the common men are 
mean. Such nations are like inverted pyramids resting on the 
strength of one man. 

For a nation to be ruled by leaders may be considered as a sur- 
vival of primitive conditions, when there was no politics save war. 
Then all men were warriors and the tribe was but an array with a 
camp-following of women, children, and civilians. 

When militarism gives way to industrialism we have the rise of the 
individual man at the expense of the relative standing of his leaders; 

39 



for leadership is necessary only as collective danger threatens. The 
rulers are transformed from leaders to agents. These are at first 
under democracy responsible to self-constituted managers, dema- 
gogues, and bosses who usurp control when no imminence of danger 
forces the necessity of strong leadership. 

From this transition stage, democracy must pass on to settled 
institutions and good service. In the stage which comes next, the 
intelligent citizen shall be the trust and head of political affairs with 
servants elected, appointed, or chosen by competitive examinations to 
do his bidding and carry out his will. " The citizen is at the head," 
says Walt Whitman, and President, Congress and Courts "are but 
his servants for pay." The decay of leadership must accompany the 
rise of the individual man. 

Let us assume by way of illustration a few impossible things. 
Let us suppose that the Emperor of Germany should die suddenly, 
and that with him should disappear the whole royal family, the army, 
the judiciary, and all others in power with all the force over which they 
had control. Who can say what would happen next? Can we even 
guess at the map of the next new Germany ? — for the German Empire 
has no strength in itself. It is strong in battle, because it owns 
millions of fighting men. It has no strength in the hearts of the 
people. The failure of the force of arms even for a day would mark 
the end of the German Empire. 

On even frailer basis rests the Republic of France. Could such 
good fortune befall her as the loss of her army and all others in power, 
no one could foretell her protean changes. If, perchance, the sceptre 
fell into the hands of the people, the new Republic of France would 
be very different from any she has ever yet seen. 

If in Great Britain the same change could take place what should 
we see ? If every official of whatever grade, all the army, and all the 
navy were swallowed in the sea can we forecast the result ? 

Evidently in England herself no great change would arise. 
Respect for law and respect for tradition are firmly ingrained in the 
English character. What had been would be established again, and 
the Commonwealth of England would lose not a whit of its power or 
stability. But what of the British Empire ? Its scattered fragments 
could never be collected again. Ireland, held by force, would go in 
her own way, and her dififerent factions would again repel one another. 
Self-government for Ireland means disunion of the Empire, and this 
the English statesmen know too well. India is no nearer England 
to-day than she was a hundred years ago. There is not one of her 
vassal nations which would not escape if it could. There is not one 
whose presence does not weaken the British Empire. Shrewd admin- 

40 



istration has learned to count on this and to find out compensating 
advantages. A vast business on a small capital is the type of British 
dominion. No wonder England cherishes her relation to Canada and 
Australia, elder children of hers, who give her moral help but who 
take care of themselves. England dare not release Ireland from 
federal union, because only as a helpless minority can Ireland be con- 
trolled. On the other hand she dare not admit the rest of the empire 
to the same federation lest she be thrown into the minority herself. 
Sooner or later both these questions will become burning ones. 
When they are solved Great Britain will be no longer an empire. 

"Gladly," says Dr. Woolsey, "would Great Britain limit her 
responsibilities if she could; but it would be construed as a sign of 
weakness, and she fears the consequences. She cannot let go." 
"Imperial expansion, " says Frederick Harrison, speaking of condi- 
tions in England, "means domestic stagnation. It swallowed the 
energies of Liberalism and bartered progress for glory." The 
fabric of Imperialism, whatever its form, is built in shifting sands. 
The only solid foundation for any government is "the consent of 
the governed;" and here lies the strength of the United States, the 
soundest government on the face of the earth. Not the wisest, not the 
most economical, most dignified, or most just, but the firmest in its 
basis, and, therefore, the most enduring. 

At the close of the Civil War, when more than ever before in its 
history the nation was dependent on a single man, and he the wisest, 
bravest, tenderest of all, Lincoln was murdered. The land was 
filled with sorrow and distress, but there was no alarm in our body 
politic. It was left to Lincoln, says Brownell, 

" Even in death, to give 

This token for freedom's strife 
A proof how republics live. 
Not by a single life. 
But the right divine of man 
The million trained to be free." 

Our government would have endured, even in that troubled time, had 
every official of every State fallen with Lincoln. 

Should our whole body of officers, our army, our navy, perish 
to-morrow, all would go on as before. Some veteran of the Civil 
War, or some schoolmaster, perhaps, would take the chair and call 
the people to order. The machinery of democracy would be started, 
and, once started, would proceed in its usual way. We should not 
have Cuba nor the Philippines, but we should retain all that was 
worth keeping. This stability of administration would not arise 
from our respect for law. That feeling is none too strong among 

41 



our "fierce democracy." Still less would it spring from respect for 
tradition. We don't care a continental for tradition. We should act 
on the common sense of the common man. To cultivate this com- 
mon sense is the chief mission of democracy. In this it is effective, 
and for that reason our Republic is the strongest and soundest govern- 
ment under heaven. 

"I have never learned," says John Brown, "that God is a 
respecter of persons." There is " God in our Constitution," not in 
name, but. in fact, for by it "all men are equal before the law," 
which " is no respecter of persons." Men are men, whether white 
or black or brown or yellow. The British government rests on a 
foundation of inequality. Its rewards are titles of nobility which 
imply that the plain man is ignoble. The word law is written on its 
every page; the word justice occurs only as between equals. Neither 
the word nor the idea of justice finds place in England's dealing 
with other nations. 

" How long will the United States endure ? " Guizot once asked 
of James Russell Lowell. " So long as the ideas of its founders 
remain dominant," was his answer. Just so long as her government 
rests on the intelligent " consent of the governed." When it rests in 
part on force, no matter how wisely applied, in so far will it be 
unstable. A standing army contains the seeds of decay. As mili- 
tarism grows democracy must die. But without the constant pressure 
of force of arms, law and order and industry have never in any high 
degree existed in the tropics. Mexico to-day is a land of law and 
order, but the soldier is everywhere. Every railway train in the 
Republic carries at least three rurales, or national guardsmen. Every 
flag station has two or three, and every considerable town has its bat- 
talion or its regiment. These soldiers are drawn from the body of 
the people ; very many of them are ex-brigands, reformed to the 
higher use of the enforcement of law. " This may not be republi- 
canism, but it is business." The conditions of law and order in the 
Philippines are just the same. You may use native soldiers if you 
like, but without force order cannot exist. 

The cost of this whole business may be urged as an argument 
against annexation. It will appeal to our people as the discussion 
of the bill for the enlargement of the army plainly shows. The 
financial statements of Congress have proved the strongest arguments 
against persistency in folly. It is clearly evident that the cost of con- 
quest or even military occupation of the Philippines is grotesquely in 
excess of any possible gain to the government. The whole trade of 
the Islands for five years, if we get all of it, would not pay for a 
second-class battle-ship. People who live in straw houses do not 

42 



make international trade. We may open the way for individuals and 
corporations to grow rich, but the people can never get their money 
back. 

No possible development of the Islands can profit the people at 
large. There are no openings in the tropics for the small farmer, 
none for the American laborer, or in general none for any of the 
rank and file of the American people ; nor can any be made by any 
act of ours. We cannot alter the conditions of life in he Orient. 
The question of flag, other things being equal, affects neither com- 
merce nor industry. Trade never "follows the flag " because it is 
a flag. Trade "flies through the open door" because it is a door. 
Men buy or sell wherever they can make money. 

The whole argument that the needs of our commerce demand 
the occupation of the Philippine Archipelago is both fallacious and 
immoral. It is untrue in the first place, and unworthy in the 
second. The needs of commerce demand no act of injustice and they 
excuse none. The total cost of maintenance of our proposed gov- 
ernment in the Philippines cannot fall short of $10,000,000 per 
year and may be far greater. Our actual trade with the Islands now 
amounts to less than $500,000 per year, imports and exports together, 
and the whole trade of the Philippines with all the world is less than 
$30,000,000. No form of government could increase this much, and, 
under republican forms it might fall off. The less compulsion, the 
less labor. Allowing a net profit of ten per cent on all transactions, 
a complete monopoly of Philippine trade would leave the people a 
debt of seven millions for every three millions our trading companies 
might gain. In time, perhaps, the outlook would be less unequal. 
Trade might increase, expenses grow less, but in no conceivable event 
would the people get their money back. The returns either in 
money or civilization would always be below their cost. The argu- 
ment for commercial expansion has its roots in our experience of 
booming towns and has no value with careful financiers. The whole 
trade of all the tropics will, at the best, be but a trifling part of the 
commerce of the world. Certain drugs, dyes, and fruits, mainly 
natural products, with sugar, tobacco, coffee, and tea make almost the 
whole of it. 

So far as San Francisco is concerned, she has not much to gain 
or lose from our actions in the Philippines. She will always be a 
noble city, a great city, but never an enormous one. She will not be 
the gigantic mart of the Orient, nor even the Chicago of the Pacific. 
The Pacific may be our ocean, but it is too wide to be an equal of 
the Atlantic. Besides, San Francisco has too many rival ports. She 
has little to sell but flour and fruit, and no ships to carry even these. 

43 



The trade with Manila, consisting now of outgoing transports carrying 
troops and returning with coffins, will never make San Francisco rich. 
It is true that conditions may change, but no signs of improvement 
are visible yet. 

Yet it is true that commercial Imperialism might pay if we were 
free to act as England would with her wisdom, her experience, and her 
selfishness ; but only on a vast and generous scale, considering com- 
mercial results only, could we make her policy effective. The 
function of the British army and navy in these days is not glory nor 
dominion. It is to clear away the barriers to trade. When England 
subjugates a nation she lets it alone as much as she can. Interference 
means waste of men and money. She never meddles with the 
religion nor the forms of government of her vassals. The people 
may choose king, or president, or sultan, and each may conduct his 
own court in his own way, with all the gold lace and peacock feathers 
that his barbaric taste may demand. England does not care for this. 
On her coat-of-arms are these three words only, VOLUME OF 
TRADE. 

All that England now asks of the nations she calls colonies is this, 
and this she gets, that there shall be law and order, and all doors 
wide open to the commerce of all the world. So long as other nations 
keep closed doors at home, England can undersell them in the 
markets of the world. Imperialism, then, as Lord Beresford truth- 
fully insists, means with England simply this, Volume of Trade. All 
the rest is mere flummery. The sole purpose of the British navy, 
accident aside, is to hold the doors of the world open to British 
merchant ships. Except as an adjunct to an open door of commerce 
all foreign possessions are costly and ruinous folly. The maintenance 
of Algiers, Madagascar and the Indo-China as tariff-bound colonies 
for Frenchmen to exploit has wrought the financial ruin of France, 
The militarism these follies made necessary has wrought her civic 
ruin. But with Great Britain army and navy are but adjuncts used 
with marvelous skill toward one great purpose, Volume of Trade. 

The United States cannot be thus turned into a vast machine 
for helping its manufacturers and merchants. She has many other 
interests, and the greatest are educational and moral. 

To drop all this and plunge into the promotion of commerce 
she must cast aside all the checks and balances of her Constitution 
and to stand unhampered, just as England stands. 

The British Government acts on the instant. Its only limitation 
is the confidence of the people. So long as it holds this by success 
there is no restraint on its achievements. One doubt or failure throws 
the power into the hands of the opposing party. This forces to the 

44 



front the cleverest and strongest men in all England. It forbids 
incompetence in every branch of government. A paltry Minister of 
War, a scandal of embalmed beef, a rebellion which tact would have 
avoided, any of these things would throw the British Ministry out of 
power. So these things in England never happen. 

Our government is not an organism which can think and act as 
a unit. It is simply the reflex of the people themselves ; the mirror 
of the mass, with all its crudities and inconsistencies. It exists for 
the purpose of exalting men, not for developing industry or swelling 
the Volume of Trade. The British flag extends the trade of England 
because it insures local peace and clears away the rubbish of tariff 
which obstructs traffic. The Dutch flag helps the trade of Holland 
because it means enforced industrialism, slavery that pays its way. 
The American flag, outside of America, as yet means nothing; neither 
greater industry nor freer commerce, nor yet increased observance of 
law ; our flag stands for something accomplished. To plant it any- 
where cannot help our trade. 

If we were to follow in England's footsteps let us see what we 
should have done. Let us begin with the war for Cuban freedom, 
though with England in our place there would have been no war. She 
would have found a way of saving Cuba for herself without humiliat- 
ing Spain. 

But the war once on would have been pushed on business prin- 
ciples. Our navy shows the British method. Our army suggests the 
methods of Spain. Great Britain would have no scandal in her 
army because she would have no politicians there. There would 
have been no officials not trained to the profession; no colonels 
who had not earned their promotion by success. Severe training and 
faithful service give military precedence in England. Political 
services or favor of the Minister do not count. They find their 
reward in titles of nobility. Favoritism on the part of a Minister of 
War would throw the whole government out of power. In England, 
political scheming in army or navy or civil service alike stands on 
the plane of forgery or counterfeiting. The nation could not endure 
it and live. 

The war once finished, peace would be made with the blade of 
the sword. No civil commission would be sent to wrangle over the 
details. They would be settled on the instant. Spain would be 
given a day to relinquish whatever England wanted, and England 
would speak her wishes in no uncertain tones. What England would 
do with these possessions is evident enough. She would put down 
rioting and brigandage, and she would employ the native soldiery to 
do it. She would press the strongest leaders into her service, 

45 



humoring their vanity with titles and making her interests their own. 
She would let the people form whatever government their fancy chose » 
with only this limitation, all factions must keep the peace. To show 
what peace means she would knock down a fortress or two, or blow a 
few hundred rebels from her guns for an object lesson to the rest. 

All this in England's case would have taken place long ago with 
the sinking of the navies of her foes, and once accomplished the 
door of commerce would be flung open to all the world. All this 
has its glories, it may be its advantages, and we have men enough 
who, with force in hand, could carry out its every detail. But it 
could not be done under our Constitution, nor under our relation of 
parties, nor under the administration now at the head of our affairs. 
To pause in its accomplishment would be fatal. To hesitate is to fail, 
and our opportunity, such as it was, as well as our imperial prestige, 
was lost when we made the leaders of the Filipinos our enemies. 

"If ever," says Dr. William James of Harvard, " there was a 
situation to be handled psychologically, it was this one. The first 
thing that any European Government would have done would have 
been to approach it from the psychological side: Ascertain the senti- 
ments of the natives and the ideals they might be led by, get into 
touch immediately with Aguinaldo, contract some partnership, buy his 
help by giving ours, etc. Had our officers on the ground been 
allowed to follow their own common sense and good feeling they 
would probably have done just this. Meanwhile, as they were for- 
bidden by orders from Washington, no one knows what they would 
have done. 

" But it is obvious that for our rulers at Washington the Filipinos 
have not existed as psychological quantities at all, except so far as 
they might be moved by President McKinley's proclamation. * ^K * 
When General Miller cables that they won't let him land at Iloilo, 
the President, we are told, cables back: "Cannot my proclamation 
be distributed?" But apart from this fine piece of sympathetic 
insight into foreigners' minds there is no clear sign of its ever having 
occurred to anyone at Washington that the Filipinos could have any 
feelings or insides of their own whatever, that might possibly need to 
be considered in our arrangements. It was merely a big material 
corporation against a small one, the " soul " of the big one consisting 
in a stock of moral phrases, the little one owning no soul at all. 

" In short we have treated the Filipinos as if they were a painted 
picture, an amount of mere matter in our way. They are too remote 
from us ever to be realized as they exist in their inwardness. They 
are too far away ; and they will remain too far away to the end of the 

46 



chapter. If the first step is such a criminal blunder, what shall we 
expect of the last ? " 

In grim and graphic fashion the clear-sighted editor of the San 
Francisco Argonmit sets forth the lines on which we may succeed in 
our schemes of conquest: 

"If we persevere in our imperialistic plans, we shall have to 
rely upon native troops, for the reason that we can not get Americans. 
It is becoming more and more apparent that the youth of America 
will not volunteer for regular service in the tropics. We shall have 
to adopt the same methods pursued by European colonial powers if 
we continue in our imperialistic groove. We shall have to lay aside 
a great many scruples to which we now cling. 

" For example, in the Philippines we may have to adopt Spanish 
methods in many ways. We may find it necessary to stir up one 
tribe of natives against another. Thus we could arm the Visayans, 
drill them, and ship them to Luzon. The Visayans hate theTagalos, 
and we could set the two tribes to fighting together, and with the 
Visayans we might exterminate the Tagalos. Then, after the Tagalos 
were exterminated or subjected, we could stir up the fierce Moros 
of Mindanao against the Visayans. By judiciously fomenting strife 
we could exterminate the Visayans. There would then remain only 
the Moros, and probably we could get away with them ourselves. 

"Here is another suggestion. The Spaniards have always found 
it necessary to use treachery, torture, and bribery in the Philippines. 
We shall probably have to do the same. The Anglo-Saxon methods 
of warfare do not appeal to the Malay. In pursuance of our imperial- 
istic plans, it would be well to hire some of the insurgent lieutenants 
to betray Aguinaldo and other chieftains into our clutches. A little 
bribery, a little treachery, and a little ambuscading, and we w^ould trap 
Aguinaldo and his chieftains. Then, instead of putting them to 
death in the ordinary way, it might be well to torture them. The 
Spaniards have left behind them some means to that end in the 
dungeons in Manila. The rack, the thumbscrew, the trial by fire, 
the trial by molten lead, boiling insurgents alive, crushing their bones 
in ingenious mechanisms of torture — these are some of the methods 
that would impress the Malay mind. It would show them that we 
are in earnest. Ordinary, decent, Christian, and civilized methods, 
such as the United States have ahvays pursued in warfare, will only 
lead them to believe that we are weaklings and cowards, and that we 
are therefore to be steadily and sturdily combated- 

" This may seem to some of the more sentimental of our readers 
like grim jesting. It is not. It is grim earnest. We assure them 
that the Malay race can be ruled only by terror. The Dutch 

47 



can tell us a little about that from their experiences in Java. If there 
be a belief throughout the United States that these medieval methods 
are unfitted for us, then we shall have to retire from attempting to 
manage Malays. Malays are more than medieval. They hark 
back to the old, cruel days of primeval man. They are primeval 
rather than medieval, and if we want to manage Malays, we will have 
to do it in such ways that mere murder would be kindness." 

Others say that China is soon to be looted by the powers of 
Europe. We wish to be on hand in the center of the fight to get 
a share of her land and trade. " I held the enemy down," said brave 
John Phoenix at San Diego, " with my nose, which I inserted 
between his teeth for that purpose." The vultures are already at 
the huge Mongolian carcass. Let the Eagle of Freedom join his fel- 
low buzzards till his belly is full. Too proud to attack for ourselves, 
we will be close at hand to seize whatever the others may drop in the 
scramble. Why not.? If we do not enter the struggle, they "will 
forever shut us out of the trade of China." What nonsense this is. 
Trade demands customers, and China will never have a better cus- 
tomer than the United States. To shut out anybody shuts out trade 
and the wrangling powers will bid for our markets, even if we leave 
to them the cost, the waste and the shame of the spoliation of China. 
To secure our share of the China trade we have only to be ready 
with something to exchange and ships to carry it. No nation can 
afford to subjugate China or to hold any part of it under military 
force. The sphere of influence is the open door. We have only to 
meet the open door with open door. To hold the Philippines will 
not make our commerce. Annex them and we shall be just as far 
from the goal as before. Bind them with our tariffs and we shall 
leave them practically no commerce at all. In any case, beyond the 
conveniences of a coaling station they do not enter into the Chinese 
question in any way. 

The argument that annexation is a violation of our Constitution 
does not impress pie as conclusive. The Constitution is an agree- 
ment to secure justice and prudence in our internal affairs. Its 
validity is between State and State, and between man and man. The 
hope of this country lies in the intelligence, morality and virility of 
its people, not in the wisdom of its leaders, still less in the perfections 
of its Constitution. Constitutions are mere paper at best, unless they 
rest on the consent of the governed; unless the principles they repre- 
sent are deep ingrained in the hearts of the people. If the United 
States is a nation she holds all national prerogatives. As a nation she 
may do whatever she chooses, if no other power prevents. The 
Constitution cannot test the wisdom of an action. She m.ay 

48 



annex barbarous countries, make war on the universe, or do any 
other wicked or foolish thing if the decision to do so keeps within 
proper forms of law. If, however, the Constitution offers an effective 
barrier against folly we shall soon find it out. We may be sure that 
no weapon against Imperialism will be left unused. Whether the 
letter of the Constitution forbids the acquisition of vassal provinces 
and rotten boroughs is an open question. But there is no question 
that the spirit is opposed to both. Had such conditions been fore- 
seen, the annexation of either would doubtless have been formally 
forbidden. 

I do not myself believe that the annexation of the Philippines 
will prove fatal to our Constitution or fatal to democracy. It will be 
endlessly mischievous, but it will not kill. The only poison that can 
kill is personal corruption, the moral rottenness of our people. The 
government by the people has wondrous vitality, and it has already 
survived gigantic crimes. It has outlived the monstrous blunder of 
secession and the headless spasms of "organized labor." It will out- 
live the aftermath of this war with Spain. "You cannot fool all 
the people all the time." This epigram of Lincoln's expresses the 
final strength of democracy. When the craze of the day has subsided 
and we have counted our loss in blood and treasure, we shall "walk 
backward with averted gaze to hide our shame." May this shame 
be enduring, for it is our guarantee that we shall not do the like 
again. 

Of late the argument of annexation assumes a difterent form. 
It is justified because it is inevitable. Let us enter the movement 
to rule it. Some of our ablest students of political affairs argue 
in this fashion. The treaty with Spain is sure to be ratified. The 
Philippines will be ceded to the United States. Cession compels 
annexation. We are in the current — not of divine Providence nor of 
abstract destiny, but of inevitable public opinion. It is no more 
use to struggle against this than against winds and tides. " The King 
can do no wrong." All the prestige of power is with the adminis- 
tration. The American people are bent upon keeping all the territory 
won from Spain. It is all a great joke with them, and they will never 
stop to look at the thing seriously. The one-sided, freakish and chival- 
rous war has intensified the humor of the situation. As well argue 
against a cyclone as against a national movement. The American 
people are fearless and determined. They go ahead to the aim in 
view, and can take no backward step. They have solved many 
difficulties in the past by sheer headlong obstinacy. They will solve 
these difficulties in the same fashion. Let us join the procession. 
Let us not cheapen our influence by mugwumpery, but accept the 

49 



inevitable, step to the front as leaders and handle the movement 
as best we can. Especially, they tell us, we must seize the occasion 
to emphasize the value of wise methods, and, above all, the vital needs 
of thorogh Civil Service reform. 

But Civil Service reform is the special abhorrence of most of the 
leaders in the movement for annexation. The petty offices the Philip- 
pines promise are the basis of half their influence. The promises of 
the Administration lavishly scattered before nomination as before 
election are still far in excess of their fulfillment. Because of these 
outstanding promises our volunteer army has been cheapened and 
disf^raced. Is there any promise of better things when civil rule in 
the Islands shall succeed martial law and the natives are turned over 
to " amateur experimenters in colonial administration ? " 

As a matter of fact we know that the pressure of the spoilsman 
has been and is greater than most Presidents can resist. The appoint- 
ment of civil officials in the Philippines means the carnival of the 
spoilsmen. The United States must prepare itself for scandal and 
corruption in greater measure than it has ever yet 'known. Already 
such scandals are ripening at Manila, if we may trust the guarded 
language of our volunteer soldiers. The "embalmed " beef and the 
rotten commissaries are only the first instalment. What shall follow 
will not be more fragrant. The universities of California have more 
than one hundred men in the ranks at Manila to-day, men of culture 
and education,* volunteers who rushed forward at the call of their 
country. Over these men are some officers brave and manly, a few 
of them even trained for their business. But those officers placed 
in authority over our patriotic soldiers are not always gentlemen. 
Too many of them are men to whom in civil life these same 
volunteers w'ould not entrust their dogs. Who is to blame for 
this ? Who organized the army to place political pull in place of the 
training of West Point ? Had our volunteers been sent to Cuba or 
Manila with only corporals chosen by them.selves and not an officer 
of staff or line, brave as some of the latter were, they would have 
made as good a record as is shown to-day. Officers competent to 
lead, willing to share privations, could accomplish anything with these 
soldiers. The tinsel sons of politicians were an insult to patriotism. 
The feeling of the volunteer army to-day is that of men insulted on 
every side. Compare this with the feeling of the men who came 
home from Appomattox in 1865; and the difference is not in the 
soldiers ; it is the work of the spoilsman. 

The American soldier will gladly suffer every hardship necessary 
in the work on which his country sends him. Under real offi- 
cers, men whose special training makes their orders effective, men 

50 



who are not afraid to live or die in his company, he will face every 
danger. But he will not willingly endure imposed hardships which 
serve no purpose and which he thinks due to carelessness or greed, 
nor under pasteboard ofificers who riot in luxury while he rots in the 
swamps. 

Very soon the preacher, the economist, and the politician who 
now work together for expansion shall part company. The politician 
does not enter the Philippines to convert the heathen— unless, indeed, 
he can convert them into coin. He is there for the same reason that 
the Spaniards were, what he can make out of it. He has shown no 
signs of repentance in the matter of spoils. He has not joined the 
economist in devising schemes for a purified automatic colonial Civil 
Service. When he is mustered out from one place he must be cared 
for somewhere else. 

Let me give an illustration or two from past experience. 
Some ten or twelve years ago Congress made an effort to protect the 
buffalo herd in the Yellowstone Park. To this end provision was 
made for a certain number of experts to act as Keepers of the Park. 
Professor Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, wished to have these 
Keepers drawn from the ranks of trained naturalists, that the Park 
might be investigated while the animals were cared for. He asked me 
to nominate one of these and my choice fell on a young man, a person 
of eminent fitness, a doctor of philosophy in Zoology and a man of 
physical strength and woodcraft. He is now curator in the Field 
Columbian Museum at Chicago. When the Congressman from his 
district in Indiana learned of this choice he demanded the right to 
make it himself. This the appointing power dared not refuse, and 
the Congressman proceeded to redeem his outstanding promises. He 

first chose a man named C n, who could not accept as he was 

serving a sentence in the Monroe County jail for larceny. His 

second choice, H n, received the notice of his appointment while 

under arrest for riding a mule into a Martinsville saloon on Sunday 

morning. The mule was sober and would not go in. H n died 

of alcoholism at Mammoth Hot Springs, and the buffaloes were 
slaughtered in the Absarokie Hills unprotected and unavenged. 

In 1890 the Census Bureau asked me to send them an expert 
in fishery matters, at a low salary, below that offered in the classified 
service. I suggested the name of a young man from Kansas. At 
once the representative from Topeka claimed the appointment. He 
had promised the first plum that fell to his district to Major Somebody, 
and the Major must have it. So the Census Bureau was obliged to 
find in the Post Office Department a position at the same salary for 
the Major. This the Major declined in indignant disgust. 

51 



Meanwhile the census of the marine industries went on in the 
hands of men grotesquely incompetent. They were set to doing 
things that could not be done. They copied their figures from the 
magnificent census report of 1880. They made statistics at random, 
which were changed in the Bureau itself to tally with the records of 
1880. The expert wrote me: "However little confidence the outside 
public has in our census figures, it is vastly greater than the confidence 
of anyone inside the Bureau." Finally he resigned in disgust. The 
resignation was not accepted. Then he brought charges of incompe- 
tence and falsification against the chief of the division and all his 
clerks and enumerators save one or two. On investigation all were 
dismissed and the expert was directed to compile the census of the 
fisheries for 1890 from the report of the Fish Commission for 1888, 
The sound and thorough work of Willcox and Alexander was thus 
utilized, but the whole manuscript of the Census Bureau on the same 
subject costing several thousands of dollars went into the waste 
basket. The courage of one clerk saved us from trusting for our 
information to a lot of " amateur experimenters" in statistics. 

The appointment of drunken idlers to positions of trust was an 
every-day affair in all departments not many years ago. The Civil 
Service regulations have saved the minor positions, but at the same 
time they have intensified the pressure on those above the classified 
list. It is a maxim of our politics that anybody will do for positions 
outside the country or where newspapers do not send their reporters. 
All of last year the parlors of the White House were crowded every 
day with vulgar incompetents, and the Senators forced to stand as 
their unwilling sponsors. Every one familiar with the facts knows 
that the day of appointments for merit only has not yet come to 
Washington. I have purposely chosen two cases from another 
administration. I can parallel both of these from the present one. 
I see in Mexico the President and his advisers using every effort to 
select a wise and effective successor to Matias Romero, their accom- 
plished and manly Ambassador at Washington. They have found, 
at last, such a man worthy of their country and ours. When we have 
chosen Ministers to Mexico, with one exception, Pacheco (himself a 
Spanish-Californian), not one of them has understood the language 
of the country to which he was sent. Fitness does not interest our 
politicians . The President at the best is almost helpless in the hands of 
the Congressional influence. The Administration has rarely tried to 
rise above it. In the international commissions only, useless and 
belated as most of them have been, can we see an effort to secure 
the best service possible. This fact we must recognize, and I do so 
with real satisfaction. 

52 



We may counsel together, economists and preachers; we may 
discuss in conventions the wise management of alien colonies; we 
may pass our virtuous resolutions; we may analyze the successes of 
the Dutch and the failures of the French, but our masters care not 
for our discussions and our resolutions. Even now the rough riders 
of our politics do not conceal their contempt of the whole business of 
good government. They are not in the Philippines "for their 
health," and our mugwump remonstrances are but as the idle wind 
which they regard not. 

But the deed is not yet accomplished. I have tried to keep up 
with the progress of events, but I have never heard that we have con- 
stitutionally annexed any territories since we absorbed the little nation 
of Hawaii. 

But if annexation is our final decision, the nation must begin at 
once its life and death grapple with spoilsmen in high places as well 
as in low. 

We are told that the Philippine question is bringing our best 
men forward and that it therefore, furnishes a needed "stimulus 
to higher politics," But the higher politics has not yet been shown 
in our official action. It appears only in the earnest protest of all 
classes of men who look forward to the inevitable disaster. Their 
warning voices are outside of politics. 

Admitting, however, that somewhere or other a reason exists for 
taking the Philippines; admitting that we have extinguished Agui- 
naldo somehow by gold or by sword, what shall we do with them ? 

Shall we hold them as vassal nations, subject to the sovereign 
will of Congress ? Shall we make them territories, self-governing so 
far as may be under republican forms ? Shall we devise tariffs and 
other statutes in their interest alone or shall we extend to them 
unchanged our protective tariff, our navigation laws, and our Chinese 
Exclusion Act just as they stand, without modification ? At this 
point the Annexationists fall apart one from another. To hold the 
Philippines as a vassal nation is Imperialism. It is the method of 
Great Britain and Holland. Its justification is its success. It 
teaches respect for law, which is the first essential in industrial 
development. It holds the open door which is the first essential to 
commerce. 

In promoting industrial progress in the tropics we have two 
successful models : wealth through enforced labor and through 
contract labor. Neither of these is slavery, as Mr. Ireland has 
pointed out, but the distinction is not one worth wrangling over. 
Java, with law and order, perfect cultivation, fine roads and great 
industrial activity, the fairest garden in all the world, furnishes the 

53 



highest type of industrial success. The Island is one vast plantation, 
owned by the kingdom of Holland. The natives have lost the title 
to the land and can not buy nor sell it. The natives pay their taxes 
to the government in work ; the labor is obligatory and the obligation 
is enforced by law. In such manner the people are rescued from 
natural indolence. There is prosperity everywhere. The State 
derives a large revenue, the people are relatively contented, though 
a stranger to the idea of freedom. With politics the native has 
nothing to do. Missionaries are excluded from the island and the 
people have only to work as they are told, and enjoy themselves as 
they can. " This may not be republicanism, but it is business." 

This is a way to a certain prosperity in the Philippines, but with 
us it is not a possible way. Our temper, our traditions, our machinery 
of government leave no room for such despotic paternalism. Even 
this method has failed in other Dutch colonies. It fails with the 
negroes in the Dutch colony of Surinam. In the midst of the coffee 
harvest the people go off to the woods for a month of devil worship. 
The spell comes on them and off they go. The only recourse of the 
plantation owners is to bring contract labor from China or Japan. 
This method has failed in Sumatra where the natives still hold out 
against the civilization that would make money out of their work. 

Only through coolie contract labor has industrial success in any 
of the British West Indies been possible. The natives will not work 
continuously unless they are forced to work as slaves. But contract 
labor from the outside means the ultimate extermination of the 
natives themselves. 

In tropical Mexico the industrial situation is not much better. 
The great haciendas in the sugar and coffee region, cheap as labor is 
(six to ten cents a day), are never sure of help when needed. Even 
now Senor WoUheim, Mexican Minister in Japan, is arranging for Jap- 
anese contract laborers to work the great coffee plantations of Chiapas 
and Tabasco. Enforced labor of the natives, contract labor from the 
outside — between these we must choose, if the tropics are made 
economically profitable. Both systems are forms of slavery, but 
slavery is endemic in the tropics. Freedom in the warm countries 
means freedom from work, but without work there is no wealth in 
mines or sugar. 

" If the Antilles are ever to thrive," says James Anthony Froude 
(as quoted by Mr. Ireland), " each of them should have some 
trained and skilful man at its head unembarrassed by local elected 
assemblies ... Let us persist in the other line, let us use the 
West Indian governments as asylums for average worthy per- 
sons to be provided for, and force on them black parliamentary insti- 

54 



tutions as a remedy for such persons ' inefificiency, and these beau- 
tiful countries will become like Hayti with Obeah triumphant and 
children offered to the devil and salted and eaten, and the conscience 
of mankind wakes again and the Americans sweep them all away." 

Concerning Dominica, Mr. Froude says: "Find a Rajah 
Brooke if you can, or a Mr. Smith of Scilly . . . Send him out 
with no more instructions than the Knight of La Mancha gave 
Sancho, — to fear God and do his duty. Put him on his metal. 
Promise him the praise of all good men if he does well ; and if he 
calls to his help intelligent persons who understand the cultivation of 
soils and the management of men, in half a score of years Dominica will 
be the brightest gem of the Antilles . . . The leading of the wise few, 
the willing obedience of the many is the beginning and end of all right 
action. Secure this and you secure everything. Fail to secure this 
and be your liberties as wide as you can make them, no success is 
possible." 

This ideal of Mr. Froude is not without precedent in American 
Colonial affairs. The wonderful development of New Mellakahtla by 
William Duncan is the perfection of wise paternalism. Its failure 
lies in its certain collapse when the strong hand of the founder is 
withdrawn. The rule of the Pribilof Islands is the same in theory, 
and under competent men, as it is to-day, it works well in practice. 
But government by rulers not responsible to the people they rule is 
Imperialism. It is contrary to our ways and traditions, and our news- 
papers and politicians alike hasten to repudiate it. It is, in fact, 
industrial success at the expense of political development. The 
alternative is to bring the Philippines into politics, to endow them 
with the rights of our citizens, to give them the services of our own 
politicians and let natives and carpet-baggers work out their own 
salvation under our forms of law. I cannot imagine any government 
much worse than this might be, but it is safer than Imperialism, if 
these lands and these people become a part of our democratic 
nation. If we must choose, let us stick to republican forms. A 
folly is always better than a crime. Confusion, bankruptcy, and 
failure probably are better in the long run than Imperialism. They 
are more easily cured. America has ideals in civil government and to 
these she must be loyal. The Union can never endure " half slave, 
half free," half democracy, half empire. We cannot run a republic 
in the West and a slave plantation in the East. We must set our 
bondsmen free, however unready they may be for freedom. There 
is no doubt that our forms of law, the evolution of ages, are ill fitted 
for the needs of primitive men. Doubtless it would be better for 
themselves to work out their own destiny as we have worked out ours. 

55 



But if they join us, they must take up with our fashions because we 
cannot adapt ourselves to theirs. 

The Anglo-Saxon is, doubtless, the grandest of races, pushing, 
effective, successful. But it is not the most lovable, the most con- 
siderate, nor the most just when it covets what another possesses. 
Most Anglo-Saxon achievements are justified only by success. " The 
efforts of our Anglo-Saxon nations," says Professor Lewis G. Janes, 
"to civilize inferior races by force have always been tragic failures. 
Witness New Zealand where about 40,000 Maoris survive out of 
700,000 who were there a century ago ... It is not the testi- 
mony of history that the best survive. The strongest and ablest 
resist and are killed off. Those lacking in vitality who supinely 
submit to the inevitable are the ones who survive ... It is the 
fate of all people on whom conditions of life are forced in advance 
of their functional development. Does the tragedy of the passing 
of these peoples bring any adequate compensation to the world ? The 
sociologist and ethical teacher is compelled to say no. It brutalizes 
and depraves the conqueror. It perpetuates despotic methods of 
government. It prolongs the evil region of militancy. It debases 
labor and gives rise to class distinctions. 

"The Maoris, the Hawaiians, the Filipinos, the Cubans, are all 
more competent to rule themselves than we are to govern them, 
judged by any test that implies their permanent betterment and sur- 
vival as a people. We have begun at the wrong end in our efforts to 
civilize the world . . . The path of conquest is gory with the blood 
of victors and victims alike." 

'True liking between colors is impossible," says the London 
Spectator. But this may depend on how the man of white color 
behaves himself. 

Says Gold win Smith : "If empire is to be regarded as a field 
for philanthropic effort and the advancement of civilization, it may 
safely be said that nothing in that way equals, or ever has equalled, 
the British Empire in India. For the last three-quarters of a century, 
at all events, the empire has steadily administered in the interest of 
Hindu. Yet what is the result.? Two hundred millions of human 
sheep, without native leadership, without patriotism, without aspira- 
tions, without spur to self improvement of any kind; multiplying, 
too many of them, in abject poverty and infantile dependence on a 
government which their numbers and necessities will too probably in 
the end overwhelm. Great Britain has deserved and won the respect of 
the Hindu; but she has never won, and is now perhaps less likely than 
ever to win, his love. Lord Elgin sorrowfully observes that there is 
more of a bond between man and dog than between Englishman and 

56 



Hindu. The natives generally having been disarmed cannot rise against 
the conqueror, and their disaffection is shown only in occasional and 
local outbreaks, chiefly of a religious character, or in the impotent 
utterances of the native press. But the part of the population which 
was armed, that is to say the Sepoys, did break out into what was 
rather an insurrection of caste than a military mutiny, and committed 
atrocities which were fearfully avenged by the panic fears of the 
dominant race. It is perilous business all round, this of governing 
inferior races. Nor is it true that the work is done better by the 
highest race than by one upon a lower level, to which it is not so 
impossible to sympathize or even fuse with the lowest. ' Some of the 
tribes of the Philippines are said to be as fierce as Apaches, If that 
is all Uncle Sam will handle them in his accustomed style.' Is not a 
warning conveyed in such words ? Dire experience has shown that 
the character of the matter suffers as well as the body of the slave, 

"War, the almost certain concomitant of empire, is alleged to 
have a more blessed effect on the internal harmony of nations. This 
we are told not only in the press, but free from the pulpit ; some going 
even so far as to intimate that the restoration of national harmony was 
a sufficient object for this war. The moral world would be strangely 
out of joint if a nation could cure itself of factiousness or of an 
internal disorder by shedding the biood and seizing the possessions of 
its neighbors. War has no such virtue. The victories of the 
Plantagenets in France were followed by insurrections and civil wars 
at home, largely owing to the spirit of violence which the raids of 
France had excited. The victories of Chatham were followed by 
disgraceful scenes of cabal and faction as well as of corruption, 
terminating in the prostration of patriotism and the domination of 
George III and North. Party animosities in the United States do 
not seem to have been banished or even allayed by the Cuban War. 
Setting party divisions aside, no restoration of harmony appeared 
to be needed, so far as the white population was concerned. Not 
only peace, but good-will, between the North and the South had been 
restored in a surprising degree. The Blue and the Gray had frater- 
nized on the field of Gettysburg. It was to harmonize white and 
black that some kindly influence was manifestly and urgently needed. 
But all through the war and since the war American papers have been 
almost daily recording cases of lynching, sometimes of such a char- 
acter as to evince the last extremity of hatred and contempt. The 
negro is lympathetic, apathetic, patient of degradation and even of 
insult. But San Domingo saw that he had a tiger in him ; and when 
the tiger broke loose, hell ensued. There has been at least one 
instance of the retaliatory lynching of a white man ; and now we have 



a bloody battle of races at Virden. Why should the American 
Commonwealth want more negroes? " 

It is said that we must conquer Aguinaldo because he in turn is 
unable to subdue the rest of the four hundred or fourteen hundred 
islands. We tolerate two republics in Hayti and five in Central 
America. What matter if two or three exist in the vast extent of the 
Philippine Archipelago ? What business is that of ours ? These 
wide-scattered islands never constituted one nation and never will. 
The most of them were never in the hands of Spain, except in name. 
Outside of Luzon there are thirty-two different tribes, it is said, each 
a little nation of itself, each speaking a different tongue. So far 
from being "paralyzed by centuries of Spanish oppression " as the 
editor of the "Outlook" describes them, most of these wild folks 
have never heard of Spain. What harm if our "new-caught " vassal 
the Mohammedan Sultan of Sulu shall continue to rule his Moham- 
medan tribes in Mohammedan fashion ? We must let him do it any- 
how. We cannot do it any better. Why not a republic of ViSayas as 
well as a republic of Luzon? If separate autonomy suits the people 
concerned why should we fight for unification ? Do we believe that 
Spanish rule was better than freedom ? These wild tribes must work 
out their own destiny or else go into slavery. Perhaps the latter is 
their manifest destiny. There is no reason why we should make it ours. 

As I have said many times, the function of democracy is not to 
secure good government, but to strengthen the people so that they 
may be wise enough to make good government for themselves. Not 
long ago, at the Congress of Religions in Omaha, I had occasion to 
say : 

That government is best that makes the best men. In the 
training of manhood lies the certain pledge of better government in 
the future. The civic problems of the future will be greater than 
those of the past. They will concern not the relation of nation to 
nation, but of man to man. The policing of far-off islands, the 
herding of baboons and elephants, the maintenance of the machinery 
of Imperialism — all are petty things beside what the higher freedom 
demands. To turn to those empty and showy affairs is to neglect our 
own business for the gossip of our neighbors. 

Men say that we want nobler political problems than those we 
have. We are tired of our tasks " artificial and transient," 
"insufferably parochial," and seek some new ones worthy of 
our national bigness. I have no patience with such talk as 
^this. The greatest political problems the world has ever known 
are ours to-day, and still unsolved — the problems of free men 
in freedom. Because these are hard and trying we would shirk 

F8 



them in order to meddle with the affairs of our weak-minded neigh- 
bors. So we are tired of the labor problem, the race problem, the 
corporation problem, the problem of coinage and of municipal 
government. Then let us turn to the politics of Guam and Min- 
danao, and let our own difficulties settle themselves! Shame on our 
cowardice! Are the politics of Luzon cleaner than those of New 
York? We would give our blood to our country, would we not? 
Then let us give her our brains. More than the blood of heroes she 
needs the brains of men. 

" Insufferably parochial," the affairs of free men must ever be. 
The best government is that which best minds its own business. Our 
own affairs are always local and devoid of world interest. Only 
through usurpation and tyranny do governmental affairs attract the 
fickle notice of the world public. 

The political greatness of England has never lain in her navies 
nor the force of her arms. It has lain in her struggle for individual 
freedom. Not Marlborough, nor Wellington, nor Grenville is its 
exponent. Let us say, rather, Pym and Hampden, Maine and Black- 
stone, Herbert Spencer and John Bright. The real problems of 
England have always been at home. The pomp of Imperialism, the 
display of naval power, the commercial control of India and China, 
all these are as " the bread and circuses," by which the Roman 
Emperors kept the mobs from their thrones. They kept the people 
busy and put off the day of final reckoning. " Gild the dome of the 
Invalides," was Napoleon's cynical command when he learned that 
the people of Paris were becoming desperate. The people of 
England seek for a higher justice, a worthier freedom, and so the 
ruling ministry crowns the good Queen as Empress of India. 

Meanwhile, the real problems of civilization develop and ripen. 
They care nothing for the greatness of empire or the glitter of Im- 
perialism. They must be solved by men, and each man must 
help solve his own problem. 

The question is not whether Great Britain or the United States 
has the better form of Government or the nobler civic mission. There 
is room in the world for two types of Anglo-Saxon nations, and noth- 
ing has yet happened to show that civilization would gain if either 
were to take up the function of the other. We may not belittle the 
tremendous services of England in the enforcement of laws amid 
barbarism. We may not deny that every aggression of hers on weaker 
nations results in at least some good to the conquered, but we in- 
sist that our own function of turning masses into men, of " knowing 
men by name," is as noble as the function of the open door. The 
real " white man's burden " is not the control of delinquent and de- 

59 



pendent races, the turning of indolence into gold. It is the devel- 
opment of what is sound and sane in human nature, the elimination 
of war and corruption by the force of healthy manhood. Better for 
the world that the whole British Empire should be dissolved, as it 
must be late or soon,* than that the United States should forget her 
own mission in a mad chase of emulation. He reads history to little 
purpose who finds in Imperial dominion, for dominion's sake, a result, 
a cause, or even a sign of national greatness. 

We may have navy and coaling stations to meet our commercial 
needs without entering on colonial expansion. It takes no war to 
accomplish this honorably. Whatever land we may need in our 
business we may buy in the open market as we buy coal. If the 
owners will accept our price it needs no Imperialism to foot the bills. 
But the question of such need is one for commercial experts, not for 
politicians. Our decision should be in the interest of commerce, not 
of sea power. We need, no doubt, navy enough to protect us from 
insults, even though every battle-ship Charles Sumner pointed out 
fifty years ago, costs as much as Harvard College, and though 
schools, not battle-ships, make the strength of the United States. We 
have drawn more strength from Harvard College than from a 
thousand men-of-war. Once Spain owned some battle-ships as many 
and as strong as ours, but she had no men of science to handle them. 
A British fleet bottled up in Santiago or Cavite would have given a 
very different account of itself. It is men, not ships which make a 
navy. It is our moral and material force, our brains and character 
and ingenuity and wealth that makes America a power among the 
nations, not her battle-ships. These are only visible symptoms, 
designed to impress the ignorant or incredulous. The display of 
force saves us from insults — from those who do not know our mettle. 

Annexationists now admit that the seizure of the Philippines is a 
"leap in the dark." But this is not the truth. Every element in 
the matter is known, and well known, to every student of political 
science. Our excellent commission can bring us no new facts. 
What we do not know is which way Congress may decide to leap. 
Between military rule and democratic anarchy there is all the differ- 
ence in the world, and the degree of our final disappointment 
depends on our policy as to conciliation, taxation, and the control of 
the Civil Service. 

Just when shall we begin democratic rule in the Philippines? 
How shall we make it work with a people alien and perverse, who 



*" England must take all her colonies into political copartnership (of taxation 
andlpf responsibility) or else abandon them, or in the end be crushed by the burden 
of their care." 

60 



have no Anglo-Saxon instincts and no relation to our history? It will 
take some time, some say 20 years, some 500, of military discipline 
to prepare them to do their part as citizens of the United States, their 
part in governing us. Military rule is offensive and costly. The 
longer it endures the less fitted are the people for civic independence. 
Are we ready to meet the expense ? Some say that we must wait till the 
Anglo-Saxon is in the numerical majority. That time will never 
come. With every rod of Luzon soil marked by an Anglo-Saxon 
grave, the living Anglo-Saxons would be a hopeless minority. 

If we go further into details of control of the tropics we shall see 
that difficulties accumulate. When we consider a tariff policy for the 
Philippine Islands we find ourselves at once between the devil and 
the deep sea. The " open door" is the price of England's favor, or 
rather it is the price of the approval of England's ruling politicians. 
It is the price of our own commerce. A generous policy as to foreign 
trade is essential to any kind of prosperity. But the open door to 
commerce marks the doom of our protective system. It is left for 
Imperialism to give the death blow to Protectionism. The open door 
places the veto on our schemes for Asiatic exclusion. To open the 
doors of the Orient is to open our doors to Asia as well. To do or not 
to do is alike difficult and dangerous. The feeling that unless we 
can exploit the Islands and ultimately exterminate their inhabitants 
we do not want them at all is growing, especially in humanitarian 
circles. The dead hand of monasticism already holds a great part of 
Luzon. This we cannot tolerate for it was the head and front of 
Spanish oppression, nor by our Constitution can we remedy it. We 
are bound to respect the rights of property, however acquired. Our 
sole remedy for any ill is freedom. For these problems I see no 
solution, nor indeed should we hope for any. If the Administration 
should formulate any policy whatever, two-thirds of the expansionists 
would repudiate it. There is no scheme on which we can agree which 
can be made to work. 

" Something between an American territory and a British colony," 
we are told, is to be their final condition. A territory is a waiting 
State; a colony is land held under martial law or in any other way for 
the good of trade. To work for something between these is to fail on 
every hand. As matters are, we shall fall short of Imperialism. On 
the other hand, we shall fail to give justice. The final result will be a 
hybrid military imperial-democratic occupation, unworthy the name 
of government, the laughing stock of the monarchy, the shame of 
democracy. Toward such a condition the movement of events is 
swiftly rushing us. 

61 



I note in the journals that the Secretary of the Treasury in his 
estimates takes no account of the revenue to be derived from Cuba 
and the Philippines. For this the papers justly praise his wisdom. 
There can be no real revenue from these sources. The only income 
which any people can receive from colonies is through increase of 
trade. This goes into private hands but finally swells the wealth of 
taxables. Since her experience in 1776, England has never taxed 
her colonies. The more worthless islands we undertake to conquer 
and rule the further are we from a favorable balance of accounts. 

We now come to the final question: If we take the Philippines, 
what will they do to us ? 

If we fail, they will corrupt and weaken us. If we succeed and 
continue our success, they will destroy our national ideals. To rule 
them as a vassal nation is to abandon our democracy, to introduce 
into our government machinery which is not in the people's hands. 
Shall we handle our vassals through the President, through Congress, 
or through military occupation ? Obviously military occupation, 
under the direction of the Executive, is the only possible way. 
Congress is too busy with other things. Paternalism degenerates 
into tyranny, and without the artificial stimulus of honor and 
titles which England so lavishly uses tyranny becomes corruption and 
neglect. To admit the Filipinos to equality in government is to 
degrade our own citizenship with only the slightest prospect of ever 
raising theirs. It is to establish rotten boroughs where corruption 
shall be the rule and true democracy impossible. The relation 
of our people to the lower races of men of whatever kind has 
been one which degrades and exasperates. Every alien race within 
our borders is, to-day, an element of danger. When the Anglo- 
Saxon meets the Negro, the Chinaman, the Indian, the Mexican 
as fellow-citizens, equal before the law, we have a raw wound in 
our political organism. Democracy demands likeness of aims and 
purposes among its units. Each citizen must hold his own freedom 
in a republic. If men cannot hold their rights through our methods 
our machinery runs over them. The Anglo-Saxon will not mix with 
the lower races. Neither will he respect their rights if they are not 
strong enough to maintain them for themselves. If they can do this 
they cease to be lower races. 

Between Imperialism on the one hand and assimilation on the 
other, are all unwholesome possibilities. An efficient colonial bureau 
would be as in England an affair of the Crown, its details out of the 
people's hands. An inefficient one would be simply spoils in the 
hands of future Tammanies. Unless represented in Congress and 
potent in party conventions outlying possessions will be wholly neg- 

62 



lected. When the newspaper correspondents are called home no- 
body cares what goes on in Cuba or Manila. We have not yet 
framed a code of laws for Hawaii or Alaska. 

With tne war in Luzon a certain class of obligations have arisen. 
These should be met in manly fashion. But the final result should 
not be a Philippine State, which shall rule itself and help rule us. 
Still less do we want an oligarchy of sugar syndicates, or a rule by 
military force, or a carpet-bag anarchy like that which once desolated 
the South, nor the equal corruption of rule under agents and pro- 
consuls sent out from Washington. These alternatives are all abhor" 
rent, and we see no other save that of chronic hopeless guerilla 
warfare, the condition in Luzon to-day, unless we recognize Philip- 
pine independence. This has its embarrassments, too, but they are 
honorable ones and can leave no disgrace or regret. 

The establishment of a protectorate over the Philippines has 
many difificuities. It is on the one hand a scheme for finally seiz- 
ing the Islands, on the other a device to let them go easily. If we 
assume unasked responsibilities for them, they will be reckless in 
making trouble. A protected republic is the acme of irresponsibility. 
Its politicians may declare war against neutral nations, solely "to 
see the wheels go round." As matters now stand we have no other course 
before us, and the blunders in dealing with Aguinaldo have made this 
course not easy. The protectorate is favored by the best judgment 
of the Filipinos themselves. They ask the help and sympathy of 
America. 

Ramon Reyes Lala, a full-blooded Filipino, born in Luzon but 
educated in England, an American citizen of standing in New York, 
is quoted as saying: 

"Although I believe we have a great future, I cannot disguise to 
myself the fact that we are not yet ready for independence. More 
especially because the Filipinos have not had the preparation for self- 
government possessed by the founders of the American Republic. 
And I apprehend that, intoxicated with their new-found liberty, the 
Filipinos might perpetrate excesses that would prove fatal to the race. 
I feel this all the more when I consider that the revolutionary leaders, 
Agumaldo and his companions, though fervent patriots, do not 
represent the best classes of my countrymen, who, almost without 
exception, are for a protectorate, or for annexation. 

"And it is this that I, too, a Filipino, desire most ardently. 
Give us an American protectorate; a territorial government; the 
judiciary, the customs, and the executive in the hands of Federal 
officials ; the interior and domestic administration in the hands of the 
Filipinos themselves; and their self-selected officials will rule under- 

63 



standingly and well without friction, which would be wholly 
impossible for alien functionaries begotten of a Western civilization. 

"Of you, Americans, I, a Filipino, therefore, beg to not leave 
my countrymen as you found them! You cannot, in humanity, give 
them back into Spanish bondage. You cannot, in justice, sell them 
to some European power to become subject, most likely, to another 
tyranny. They feel that they have fought for and won their own 
freedom, though acknowledging that you have facilitated it. They 
would, therefore, oppose such disposition to the bitter death. And a 
Filipino knows how to die! Let a thousand martyrs attest! 

" You must help them, you who have so nobly assisted in freeing 
them; you must make it possible for them to attain their destiny — the 
realization of the national self." * 

As to our true policy of to-day I give the fullest endorsement to 
the sane words of Professor Janes, in substance as follows: 

I. Let U3 carry out the solemn pledge made to the world with 
respect to Cuba, and retain military possession only long enough to 
enable the Cubans to organize a government of their own. We 
have no right to insist that our own, or any particular form of govern- 
ment, shall be adopted by the Cubans, or to impose qualifications of 
citizenship upon them. 



* The following words of Clay McCauIey, a British naturalist, are worthy of 
careful consideration in this connection : "As a result of a study of the situation at 
Manila, I think there are only three ways open to the United States for the solution 
of the Philippines problem. In the first place the Islands must be annexed by force 
or purchase. The use of force means that the United States will be plunged into 
the most disastrous foreign war in their history, a war that would entail great loss 
of life and treasure and the violation of national honor. Purchase means the 
recognition of the insurgents as allies during the war with Spain, the reward of the 
leaders with high office and salaries, the employment of insurgents in military and 
civil offices, with back pay as allies for some months, etc. Such purchase would 
secure a compromising gain of doubtful tenure. 

" Generally speaking, the Americans in Manila are opposed to annexation in 
any form. The second way open is to make a complete transfer of the sovereignty 
in these Islands from Spain to the Philippine Republic, the United States retaining 
for its own use Manila Bay and ports — like Hong Kong by Great Britain. This 
solution means the defenseless exposure of the Philippine Islands to the greed of the 
world's powers, with a consequent acute crisis in Europe over its Far Eastern ques- 
tion. This way is neither honorable nor wise. The third is to recognize the 
autonomy of the Philippines under an American protectorate. This means inde- 
pendence for the Philippine Republic in the administration of its own internal 
affairs, the United States taking charge of the supreme judiciary and the republic's 
foreign relations, such as the power to declare war or to enter into treaties with 
foreign powers and the control of the customs. This solution might bring about 
tutelage towards absolute independence in the future or voluntary annexation to the 
United States. Only by the third way can there be peace and prosperity for both 
the United Slates and the Philippines. Immediate action is imperative." 

64 



2. The same rule should be adopted in regard to Porto Rico. 

3. This government should acquire no inhabited country which 
cannot be made self-governing under our forms and ultimately 
received into the family of States. If, in the future, the people of 
Cuba and Porto Rico agree with those of the United States that 
annexation is mutually desirable, the matter can be deciaed, and in 
accordance with the provisions of their Constitution and ours. 

4. Our policy in the Philippines should be exactly the same. 
Let the people fit their government to their own needs with the 
guarantee of our protection from outside interference for a time, 
at least. 

5. Under no circumstances should distant territory inhabited by 
an alien population, not self-governing under republican forms, be 
retained as a permanent possession by the United States. 

The immediate necessity of the day is set forth in the petition 
of the "Anti-Imperialist League :" 

"They urge, therefore, all lovers of freedom, without regard to 
party associations, to cooperate with them to the following ends : 

^' First. That our government shall take immediate steps towards 
a suspension of hostilities in the Philippines and a conference with the 
Philippine leaders, with a view of preventing further bloodshed upon 
the basis of a recognition of their freedom and independence as soon 
as proper guarantees can be had of order and protection to property. 
"Second. That the Congress of the United States shall tender 
an official assurance to the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands that 
they will encourage and assist in the organization of such a govern- 
ment in the Islands as the people thereof shall prefer, and that upon 
its organization in stable manner the United States, in accordance 
with its traditional and prescriptive policy in such cases, will recognize 
the independence of the Philippines and its equality among nations, 
and gradually withdraw all military and naval forces." 

There is nothing before us now save to make peace with the 
Filipinos, to get our money back if we can, to get a coaling station 
if we must — and get out. These people tnusi first be free before they 
can enter a nation of freoneii. 

I may quote in this connection the noble words of Carl Schurz : 
" We are told that, having grown so great and strong, we must 
at least cast off our childish reverence for the teachings of Wash- 
ington's farewell address — ' nursery rhymes'that were sung around the 
cradle of the republic' I apprehend that many of those who now 
so flippantly scoff at the heritage the Father of his Country left us 
in his last words of admonition, have never read that venerable doc- 
ument. I challenge those who have to show me a single sentence of 

65 



general import in it that would not as a wise rule of national conduct 
apply to the circumstances of to-day. What is it that has given to 
Washington's farewell address an authority that was revered by all 
until our recent victories made so many of us drunk with wild ambi- 
tions ? Not only the prestige of Washington's name, great as 
that was and should ever remain. No, it was the fact that under a 
respectful observance of those teachings this Republic has grown from 
the most modest beginnings into a Union spanning this vast continent, 
our people having multiplied from a handful to 75,000, 000; we have 
risen from poverty to a wealth the sum of which the imagination 
can hardly grasp ; this American nation has become one of the 
greatest and most powerful on earth, and, continuing in the same 
course, will surely become the greatest and most powerful of all. 
Not Washington's name alone gave his teachings their dignity and 
weight; it was the practical results of his policy that secured to it, 
until now, the intelligent approbation of the American people. And 
unless we have completely lost our senses, we shall never despise and 
reject as mere ' nursery rhymes ' the words of wisdom left us by the 
greatest of Americans, following which the American people have 
achieved a splendor of development without parallel in the history of 
mankind." 

The grave responsibility we have assumed, that of bringing freedom 
to the oppressed, calls us to act with conscience and with caution. 
We are no longer a child nation, a band of irresponsible human colts, 
but mature men, capable of wielding the strongest influence humanity 
has felt. We must shun folly. We must despise greed. We must 
turn from glitter and cant and sham. We must hate injustice as we 
have hated intolerance and oppression. We must never forget among 
the nations we alone stand for the individual man. 

The greatness of a nation lies not in its bigness but in its justice, 
in the wisdom and virtue of its people, and in the prosperity of their 
individual affairs. The nation exists for its men, never the men for 
the nation. "I cannot help thinking of you as you deserve," said 
Thoreau ; " O, ye governments! The only government that I 
recognize — and it matters not how few are at the head of it or how 
small is its army — is that which establishes justice in the land, never 
that which establishes injustice." The will of free men to be just, one 
towards another, is our final guarantee that "government of the 
people, for the people, by the people, shall not perish from the earth." 



I 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



010 457 147 5 ^ 




